All My Children Returnee Julia Barr on Keeping Soaps Popular: "It's Like a Garden That Needs to be Tended"
Uber fan fave Julia Barr and her iconic Brooke English will be back in Pine Valley before we know it on All My Children. We Love Soaps caught up with the star to dish about her return for AMC's TV send off. Check out what she had to say about how soaps can remain viable:
SOAPS TV: Whenever I talk to the actors on the show or the fans, there seems to be a lot of agreement about what works and doesn't work.
Julia Barr: The networks began to panic when there began to be a noticeable audience dropoff which they attributed to O.J. Simpson. There was so much drama going on in that real environment. Some people stopped watching and when you break a habit like that, it's hard to get people back.
WE LOVE SOAPS TV: It definitely is if they tune in and don't see faces that seem familiar.
Julia Barr: Dare I wax poetic, it's like a garden that needs to be tended. It requires a great deal of care and interest on a lot of levels. I think that was abandoned. It began to be thought of like, "well, that doesn't matter" for this or that character. They found out it mattered a lot.
I sure hope Brooke and Erica (Susan Lucci) have one last televised tangle!
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Comments
15 January 2009
8 min 15 sec
Julia Barr has always been my favorite actress on AMC. It is so nice that she is returning and bad that years ago a certain EP let her go. But yes soaps are like a garden. And we've been dealing with Sanford and Son who don't know a thing about tending to no gardens. But now we have our horticulturists back at the helm of AMC and those flowers are now sure blooming. So smell the fresh scents at the Pine Valley Botanical Gardens.
12 February 2010
1 hour 57 min
Yes, I totally agree with Julia on this one. Soaps are like a garden that needs to be tended. And hacks like Julie Hanan Carruthers are like a lawn mower. Why is this woman still employed? Hopefully, Agnes and Lorraine can counteract her bullsh*t from now on out....or at least most of it.
8 May 2008
1 week 4 days
Agree, people that love the industry needs to be involve, but with the costs skyrocketing and everyone is about the dollar bill, I think that all soaps will be gone, but I hope that now is the time to reinvented the genre and give it life again. We want our soaps, dammit.
4 May 2009
55 min 51 sec
Tell it Julia!!
It has always disgusted me that Julie H-C and Megan M. let Brooke just drop out of sight in Pine Valley. "Just a whole bowl of wrong" as Martha Byrne says.