OLTL alum Jessica Morris talks with us about her new Lifetime film, soaps, and much more! Check it out here ---->>>
Soap Opera News got the chance to chat with soap alum Jessica Morris about her exciting new projects, soaps, and more! Check it out below:
Morris, who portrayed Jennifer Rappaport on One Life to Live, has kept busy since exiting the soap in 2005. This year is especially thrilling with several notable projects on the board including Lifetime’s Poolboy Nightmare, which will debut this week on Labor Day. The project follows Gale, who has a brief affair with her pool cleaner when she moves to a new home after a divorce. Things take a turn for the twisted when she realizes the relationship was a mistake, leading her lover to engage in a spiteful game of revenge.
“It was really fun,” the actress shared with us. “I’d worked with some of the cast and crew before. The director I had worked with on a horror film, Art of the Dead. He’s great. He was really pushing me a lot to get out of my comfort zone in certain ways because he was shooting this film different from some of the other Lifetime ones I’ve done. He wanted action going on all the time, which is a little more challenging when you have the emotions going on at the same time. He pushed me in that way and I appreciated it. I hope that it’ll end up making for a better movie because of it.”
We were curious talking with someone who has experience with the craziness of Lifetime films and soap operas, which one has the most chaotic stories? “Both are pretty wild but I would say soap operas because those just get really twisted. As crazy as those stories would get, there were times when I would get letters from fans saying they could relate to what was going on because it was the exact same thing that was going on in their lives. So, I think as nutty as the storylines are there are people that go through these kinds of things.”
Speaking of soaps, Jessica recently got the opportunity to reunite virtually with some of her OLTL castmates thanks to Alan Locher’s series of reunions on YouTube. “Oh, my gosh! That was so fun,” Morris expressed. “I’ve worked with Jason [Shane Scott] many times since he played my brother on One Life to Live. So, I’ve seen him often, but I hadn’t seen Catherine [Hickland] in years. It was just so refreshing and so wonderful to see her. She’s always such a bright light. We had a lot of laughs just reminiscing about when we were younger and all the silly storylines we used to do together.”
Morris looks back fondly on her tenure in daytime and credits the time for helping be a training ground that would carry her throughout her career. “I have gotten really good at memorizing lines and I attribute that from working on a soap. I was at a callback before the lockdown and they came out and gave me this additional scene saying I could do a cold reading in ten minutes. Because of those skills that I have five minutes later, I was ready to go in completely off-book, and I think I booked the role because they were so impressed that I had it completely memorized in a couple of minutes,” she laughed. “That’s really the training from the soaps that help so much.”
Getting the opportunity to reunite with her castmates and having such a love for her soap career, we wondered if Jessica would ever make a comeback to the genre. “You know, I’m always open to anything as long as I love the character. I’m not saying I want to do soaps, television, or films. I want to do any acting job that I can as long as I find the character to have something interesting that I want to play.”
Whether or not a soap return is in her future we are excited to see what this incredible actress does next! In the meantime, we can all watch her in the film The Wrong Fiance and as a recurring character in Netflix’s upcoming series The Upshaws, which will debut sometime this year. “When I heard that Wanda Sykes was one of the people involved in the show I was so pumped. Most of my scenes were with Kim Fields. She’s been around since she was a little girl and she was just such a pro. I’m not used to doing a sitcom type of comedy. So, it was different for me but it was great to just stretch that part of myself and be silly. I can’t wait to see it.” Neither can we!
Thank you, Jessica, for the lovely chat! Be sure not to miss Poolboy Nightmare when it airs September 7 at 8 PM on Lifetime.
Posts
COMMENTS