bantering

Yes, this is all very embarrassing. If the alcoholic/drunk excuse doesn't work, the only other one I can come up with is the brain tumour lie (I'm just kidding).

VD was clearly talking about history and the history of her race, so I'm still baffled as to how NLG seemed to personalize the speech so much and assume that VD was talking only about her career trajectory or plight. NLG did sound envious that VD was getting parts she couldn't get, which makes the whole twitter situation even weirder. The words were so clear, direct, and concise I figure you'd have to be pretty dumb not to properly understand what VD was saying.

Nancy Lee Grahn said something about Viola Davis being an A-list actor, and therefore shouldn't complain. But it's not like Viola Davis has been an A-list actor since the age of 22 like Jennifer Lawrence, or before her, Julia Roberts or Winona Ryder. It took decades for VD to get to where she is. VD only became well-known around 2011 or so (when The Help came out). Before that, she was slogging away like everyone else who hasn't hit a certain tier yet. So I'm baffled as to why NLG would think that Viola Davis had it that easy or that she hasn't faced obstacles. Also, VD was speaking out for other women of color, not simply for herself. No where in her speech did I hear Viola Davis go "me, me, me, it's all about me" in her speech. She mentioned other actresses of color (i.e Kerry Washington, Taraji P. Henson, Halle Berry, Nicole Behari, Gabriel Union, etc) So I don't even get how NLG failed to understand what VD was addressing.

I don't think they'd bother either. Maybe Ellen might ask VD about it and she might offer some commentary as a gesture to Ellen, but that's about it. However, the bigger problem I see is that sometimes when an actor reveals too much about their inner personality that might affect the audience's ability to separate the person from the character. That's where I could see her possibly having issues to deal with in the future. I know she's considered talented, but I'm not sure how talented. So I don't see any actors or producers threatening to fire her. But I could see some of the audience going "Wait, I can't stop seeing Nancy when she's playing Character X".

Whether NLG gets fired or not will probably depend on whether she can keep her fans or not. I don't know how her fans are reacting to her. But soap stars do a lot to try and keep their fans interested in them as actors and as personalities, and if you can't keep them watching you, I don't see how you'd be useful to the show no matter how talented you might potentially be. I assume soaps prefer that their actors be useful to them on some level (i.e Susan Lucci). I do think NLG's tweet was derogatory towards VD. I don't know if her intent was to be racist, but claiming that VD has never been discriminated against could show some implicit subconscious racism. She didn't use a slur, but pretending that people of color haven't had racist things happen to them strikes me as the kind of "polite racism" that some people might have. Or alternatively her comments could be perceived as a more toned down version of what Donald Trump might say in less coded terms, though still rude, since most people, even secretly racist people, tend to look more toned down next to Donald Trump. As I said, maybe she didn't intend to actually be racist (sometimes intent and the actual act don't align, but one or the other might occur nonetheless), but she did show that she might have some racism in her she didn't know she had, which is why she had to apologize and yet seemed shocked that no one was willing to take her side. The thing she said about withdrawing her support for people of color if you weren't nice to her seemed to also imply that her tolerance of other races is conditional.

I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility. I don't know if GH would care enough to fire her, but it could be done, I think, if they wanted to pull her from the show. But as I said I don't know if they'd actually care enough to do so. People have pondered Shonda Rimes's reaction. I'm pondering Ellen Pompeo's, if it's true that GH and HTGAWM actually share cafeterias. Pompeo's daughter is bi-racial and she has discussed her disappointment at the lack of diversity at the Emmys in a previous year. I could see her giving NLG the side-eye in the cafeteria, or maybe even giving her a verbal smack-down.

I know this is a dumb question to ask, but was NLG praising or dissing Shonda Rhimes when she said that Shonda should have written Viola Davis's speech? I know the tweet was casting criticism on Viola but I didn't really understand what she was trying to say about Shonda (other than pointing out that she writes?) NLG, on the surface, looks "classy" in terms of her carriage and speaking voice that I'm kind of shocked that she might be a bit of a nutcase, and well, rather dim. Taylor Swift was smart enough to quickly back off when she realized her error, but NLG doesn't have any common sense, which I wouldn't have expected.

Was NLG ever up for the part of Alicia Keating in How To Get Away With Murder and got turned down? That's the only explanation I could come up with to wrap my head around about why she'd get this upset about someone's Emmy speech in a public forum.

I wonder if agents consider sending out scripts like that to people of color in their agencies. Without realizing it, the agents probably automatically send those scripts out to white actors even if the originator of the description had his or her heart in the right place.

Thanks!

Who is VA and BS? Sorry, I don't regularly post on the GH board, but came here when I saw the articles about Nancy Lee Grahn's tweets about Viola Davis.

I actually thought JJ and Eve might wind up doing it again as some form of grief-sex at the loss of Paige...

Today, I was a little surprised by Abigail's lack of judgement about Chad. But as the episode went on I realized why: she said he had great character because he was willing to stand up to his dad for her. If you make it about her, you're in her good books!

We know Chad didn't kill Serena. That's a separate issue. But doesn't Chad order hits on people by working for Stephano's organization? Or does Chad just deal with the clean side of Stephano's companies? BF's acting is perfectly fine, but sometimes the dialogue where he contemplates whether he's truly capable of killing someone directly baffles me a bit. I mean, you work for Stephano. Aren't you indirectly helping to kill people....maybe the show hopes I'll forget? I guess Ben did seem a little weird when he put on the accent....just dump, Abigail, Ben. If you're this worried about what she's doing, clearly she's not worth marrying. I thought Ciara was getting re-cast, so i was kind of surprised to see she's still a little girl with very impressive enunciation. Is she going to turn up as a 16 year old in a month or so?

Whoops. Yes, I mean Steve. Thank you.

I wondered if Days hired a new make-up artist because they actually allowed Jennifer to wear lipstick that makes her lips pop.

Maybe it's because of the eye patch, but Shayne always looks the same -- I mean, I think he may have aged, but you can hardly tell. Even when Ben was gossiping about Chad, it seemed so...normal in a kind of casual way, not like he was truly trying to get in a dig at Chad. Abigail ranted and raved about Chad's Dimera-ness when he came back to town, I don't know why she'd be shocked that Ben might note the Dimera-ness too. Duh. Chad is handsome. Is Rafe a cop again? When did that happen? I thought he was some kind of bus boy now...

Who knew another physical altercation would happen so quickly? Physical altercations happen on this show all the time, which is why I mentioned earlier that Ben doesn't strike me as THAT weird. I just remembered Jenn also jumped on top of Eve previously. That was hilarious....I'm not sure if I was having the appropriate reaction though.

Was Abigail's relative that wealthy? Is the property worth that much? I guess I haven't seen Stephano try to acquire money though arranged-marriage making before, so this storyline just seems weird to me. (I know he wanted Tony and Kristen to marry each other, but I can't remember if actual money was involved.)

Then perhaps I feel something isn't coming across in Rob Wilson's performance that would make me think that Ben is particularly out of the ordinary in his behaviour. The stalker app is the one thing that raises a red flag, but even there....something feels blank. After Abigail did it with Chad, I suppose he was maybe supposed to seem creepy? but Abigail didn't seem afraid of him. That doesn't help matters either. Maybe it's there in the writing, but in the performance itself I don't feel like Ben comes across as any more weird than Chad. Chad comes across as more sinister, and I don't think he's that sinister either. Both just seem like normal guys, if a bit over-emotional at times, pining for a girl who isn't particularly worth it when we consider that she'd most likely trade both of them for a night of shower sex with EJ if he came back from the dead. Too many people have punched each other's lights on this show or shot each other in the head for me to have much of a reaction to Ben having done something to Rafe or Chad (didn't Chad say something about Jordan being better in bed than Abigail -- for a brother, Ben's reaction didn't strike me as weird and Chad seemed to know that what he said would evoke a hit from another guy). I wouldn't say he's a goody goody but I don't think he comes across as more abnormal than everyone else in Salem either. I did reference Abigail but I did also point out that everyone else in Salem has wind up in an altercation at some point too, so I'm pretty meh on what he did to either Rafe or Chad. Rafe punched EJ, and I didn't find that out of the ordinary either because that seems like the standard reaction someone would have to a guy sleeping with his wife just like I think Ben's reaction to Chad seemed more normal than his buddying up with Clyde (the latter strikes me as far more strange considering his devotion to Jordan). The only reason the others haven't been hauled off to jail is because no one ever seems to press charges for messing with elevator shafts or shooting them in the head.

The tracking app is stalkerish, but it doesn't seem like the kind of idea Ben would have ever come up with on his own. Like, it just seems that Clyde suggested it, and he was all "Um, ok, if you say so" but we have no real idea of why Ben decided to go along with it. Both Clyde and Stephano seem more interested in tracking Abigail's movements than Ben. He does get into physical altercations, but so does everyone else on this show, including Abigail. How many times has she slapped someone? Whatever Ben does, even when he's getting into a fight with someone, doesn't seem abnormal by Salem standards. While I can't help but make fun of the fact that Ben looks like a Ken doll when he takes his shirt off, overall he seems to come across as a guy from Boston who is more invested in figuring out whether Tom Brady really did take part in deflating the footballs than stalking Abigail feverishly. He does seem to love Abigail, but not in a way that I think he'd have to have her at all costs. I tend to think Chad comes across as a little more unhinged in that regard, and even he's willing to let her go. However, the reason I think Chad probably comes across as unhinged is because we see him sobbing all the time whenever he flashbacks to her...and I find that just as abnormal as Ben not having an extremely angry reaction to Abigail cheating and possibly carrying another man's baby.

I don't even think Ben comes across as that stalkersh. Plastic maybe, but not truly stalkerish. He seems concerned like anyone else would that Abigail would cheat on him, but why he continues to want to be with her knowing that she could possibly cheat on him makes the whole idea of him wanting to be with her in the first place, well, implausible. He doesn't really come across as EJ, who would truly go psycho if Sami or Nicole considered stepping out on him. Maybe EJ set the bar too high for psycho-ness that anyone else in comparison now seems more or less normal to me? Ben comes across as concerned in a normal way. But anyone who is concerned in a normal way would not really want to be with Abigail. Though, in all honesty, I do tend to skip over Clyde's scenes because he's nasty, so maybe psycho tendencies were revealed by Ben that I skipped over. But whenever he's with Abigail he seems normal enough to me. The only thing I find truly weird about him is his eyebrow and how plastic he looks when Abigail is flicking her underwear around the room.

The problem with Abigail is that too many of us want to see her suffer. And being rewarded with Chad doesn't really accomplish appropriate suffering...

Abigail's smug did seem a little more toned down, but I could still see it peeking through when she said why Chad got kicked out of the Dimera mansion. Either a new set of directors is working with her or KM knows Abigail is really getting Chad in the end so she doesn't need to act all weird. Or maybe BF told her to cut down the smug. Or maybe the whole murder thing had to put a damper on the smugness... Anyway, I guess I could see a bit of difference...not really in the writing itself because Abigail's dialogue was still snoopy, but her demeanor didn't seem quite as put-off that no one was answering her questions...I don't know if Ben would have gotten the benefit of the doubt....Abigail seemed so snooty with Ben when she kept asking him why he likes working in a bar...

Abigail always comes across as a well-groomed bimbo to me, no matter who is writing for her. I can't take her seriously as a human being with actual feelings. It's like my day is not complete if I can't make fun of her.