TV

Alicia Minshew and Sarah Brown dish on their “Beacon Hill” chemistry, amazing soap fans

After the success of the popular lesbian leaning web series Venice, Crystal Chappell partnered up with Bella Productions to bring us Beacon Hill the Series. Beacon Hill takes place in Boston, and follows the lives of Katherine Wesley and Sara Preston, former lovers who despite their devastating break up still hold a candle for one another.

Playing the Katherine and Sara are soap opera stars Sarah Brown and Alicia Minshew. All My Children fans will know Minshew as the tough but lovable Kendall Hart. Sarah Brown originated the role of the audacious Carly in General Hospital, for which she earned three Emmy Awards. AfterEllen sat down with both actresses to talk about their onscreen chemistry in Beacon Hill, working with wonderful Crystal Chappell, and the future of soaps.

AfterEllen.com: How did the two of you end up involved with Beacon Hill? Was it Crystal Chappell’s siren song, which seems to draw so many people?

Alicia Minshew: Well, I was in the middle of doing another web series called Tainted Dreams and I guess maybe she had seen that I was doing that. We’ve never worked together but we’re friendly. We follow each other on Twitter, we’ve seen each other over the years. She sent me a little message saying, “Let’s talk, I have something cool I want you to”-you know. We ended up talking over the phone and she told me all about it. Because I’m a fan of her work and I’d seen some of Venice, and I know how good she is, I was like, “Wouldn’t it be cool if I got to work with Crystal?” Then when she told me I’d be playing Sarah’s girlfriend-I’ve always loved Sarah’s work from when she was on General Hospital. I hold Crystal and Sarah in high regard as two very talented women that I’ve always wanted to work with.

I’d never played a gay woman before and that appealed to me as a whole other aspect of acting that I hadn’t done. I was so happy to be able to do it with someone who is such a strong actress. Then I read the script and I was like, I have to do this. It was a no-brainer. I get to go to Boston for a week-I live in NYC anyway so it was a quick trip for me. I get to go to a beautiful city that I love. I love Boston. And not just Sarah, but everyone in the cast! I’m friends with Ricky Paul Golden, I love Melissa and Jessica. When I saw this whole group that was attached to it, I was like, “Sign me up. No, really.”

Sarah Brown: (Crystal) came to me first when she got the script to see if she could cast me as Katherine. There were no other actors on board yet that I’d be working with. I read it and really just wanted to work with the material so much. I trust Crystal, and I like her as a person and I really, really like her work so much. So with all of that combined, I called her back and said “I’m on board, alright! Let’s do this. Bring me some good co-stars.” I put 100% faith in her and she came back with an incredible team. I just knew I could count on her to get the best people involved and she did a really fabulous job.

AE: Everyone I talk to about Beacon Hill comments on the amazing chemistry the both of you have together onscreen. I know from speaking with CC that you had not done a screen test or anything together. So when you actually got together to work of it, was it like, “Wow? This is kind of amazing?”

AM: It’s funny because we had never really met each other. I think we met each other once at the Emmys, years ago. We talked on the phone, and had great conversations. There was instant, great chemistry. We both kind of have the same work ethic. We worked on the script and we worked on the characters. We would actually read the scenes over the phone while she was in LA and I was in New York. We just discussed where our characters were coming from, who they were to each other. We actually had a really nice rapport on the phone, and we were like, “I can’t wait to actually meet you in person.”

Once we met, there was an instant kind of ease around each other. We both have similar senses of humor, and we would have moments of silliness when we would sing and act silly between takes. But then for the emotional scenes, we rehearsed, we ran our lines. We were both really focused on doing this together. It’s really nice when you have someone who works the same way as you. Then when we got along so well, it was like, “Oh, this is going to be easy.” You immediately feel safe around that person. I’ve got your back; you’ve got my back. You’re there to support each other and we kind of felt that from day one. We knew,”OK, I can go there with this person. I could choose this person, I could be in bed with this person, I could yell at this person, I could cry with this person. I can have these emotional things,” and I just knew she was going to be 100%, and she was.

SB: We did kind of mull it over a bit, how funny it was that Alicia’s personality is such that from the minute I met her, I just wanted to take care of her, protect her, and make sure she was ok. That really worked for the character. In a great way it sort of settled the dynamic. It gave it a direction for the dynamic of the characters, which I wasn’t anticipating because I’d never spent any time with her. We kind of laughed about that. Crystal really knew what she was doing when she put us together, because I think she knew intuitively our very different personalities. Alicia’s a girl’s girl. She’s just a lot of fun to be around. She’s delightful and funny and you can’t help but love her and just want to take care of her, which makes perfect sense for the characters, Katherine and Sara. AE: Alicia, you had made an appearance in the rebooted AMC which made fans completely lose it with happiness! Then unfortunately the show was cut short before we could see any more of you. Was that experience in anyway linked to getting you involved with the webseries world?

AM: I had actually signed on to do Tainted Dreams before I appeared in the reboot of AMC. When I was asked to do Tainted Dreams, it was similar to Beacon Hill in that there are 12 episodes, and a similar set up. So when I did that, I saw it was kind of a combination of a soap and a film. There’s a quick pace, lots of dialogue, boom boom boom. You just have to be really on it, but yet you’re on location. I really liked that. I felt it was the best of both worlds and it really appealed to me. I think it was much easier saying “yes” to Beacon Hill because that web series experience was great. I knew that Crystal, and especially her production company, really had their shit together. So I knew this was going to go swimmingly. I was also just really open to trying something new. I had played Kendall for almost ten years and I thought, you know, the web is kind of the wave of the future. People are watching things now online, why not try to do something that’s new to me.

AE: You both have played such iconic soap roles, and your fans seem to be very dedicated, which is something I love about soap fans. What do you think it is about that genre, about that world, that connects fans so much to your characters and you as actors?

SB: I think that it is the daily factor of soap operas. Your on in the daytime when they are busy doing other things, which makes you seem almost like a friend in their house. When your really good friends are over, you’re busy doing other things and they can go on and on about their drama and you can listen from one ear while you’re washing dishes. In the same way, soaps are that way and they are daily so it’s like having these friends in their living room everyday. (The fans) can hear their voices, their stories, what they are going through, their drama.

Of course now, soaps you can play them at night. I mean you could always do that but I think with DVRs people set aside time, probably not necessarily during the day to watch. Initially, my early experience at least, my instincts told me that the reason soap fans were so different, and so dedicated and wonderfully supportive was that they saw us everyday. The ones who were true blue fans, watched everyday. It wasn’t like waiting a week for your favorite soap star. I think the opportunity for them to feel like they could depend on the shows to get them away from whatever they didn’t want to think about for an hour, everyday. That’s a service. That’s doing something that they appreciate and like. I think that they are just very responsive to daytime actors. That’s definitely been my experience. They are so loving and supportive.

AM: You will never find more dedicated fans. It’s because we are in their living rooms every single day, and they’re going through what we’re going through. The birth of our child, the death of our husband, us cheating, us crying, us having sex. They’re watching us go through all of this, intimately every day as they follow our lives. It’s different when you are watching someone in a movie and it’s really removed. You don’t follow them everyday in your house. Even more so than some of the nighttime shows, you see that person’s face everyday so they really feel like they know you. They go through so much stuff emotionally with you. I’ve had people say, “When Zach died, I cried with you because my husband died the same year.” I think they relate to you in ways. I’ve gotten so many hugs and kisses. Any fan event that I would do is just full of so much love, love, love. They feel like they know you, so they support everything that you do. Whatever I have done after AMC, I’ve just gotten the most amazing support from the fans and I love that because I think they feel a connection to me, and all the others from all those shows.

AE: It must be an interesting transition to go from being on a show when your storyline that goes on for weeks, and months or years to having essentially over the course on an entire season, maybe an hour to get across this very poignant storyline. Is that a real challenge of filming in this web series format?

AM: It is a little different. As an actor you just kind of dive in and roll with the punches and go, ok, this is different. I’m just going to have to do it this way, and cram all this stuff into this little period of time. It will be interesting to see what happens with season two. If the episodes are a little bit longer, then what happens. I’m really excited to see what happens with that because we are all missing each other and want to work together again.

AE: It really shows on screen.

AM: We were together for just a short period of time too, like a week! And so much intense stuff happened in that week, it’s crazy. You go through all this emotional stuff and at the end of the week it’s like, “Bye!” I found myself missing them and going, that was a tease. That was almost a tease. Like ,”This has been great-let’s do more.”

SB: It’s really different, but in a way, it’s similar. In daytime, if you took each storyline and you added up the time onscreen that that storyline played out for a day, it might only be eight minutes. In some episodes they’ll give you those cliffhangers.

AE: Right, then it takes another week.

SB: Yeah, and you’re waiting for this couple to have a resolution and they keep you hanging all week. That’s how they get you to come back the following week, and so forth. In a way, it’s kind of condensing that and yet every storyline has been condensed. It’s eight minutes of our entire cast, so everybody has one or two scenes. I think that in season two, what will be really interesting, is shooting it in a way that will make it seem like the audience is truly eavesdropping in the lives of these people. And then the shortness of the time, the brevity. I know that obviously the episodes will be longer in Season 2. It won’t seem, I don’t think, to bother anyone. They’ll just be left going, “Oh my god, what’s going to happen next?!” just waiting for the next bit. They are really well put together. The next season is just fantastic, and one of those things where I couldn’t put it down. I don’t know how many pages it is, it’s really long, but I could not stop reading until one in the morning, so I know the audience will respond that way.

AE: Sarah, you have been such a fixture on soaps for nearly two decades, so I want to know, how has it been for you as part of this community, part of this world to watch that original format struggle so much in recent years?

SB: I was really young, yet I wasn’t as young as Amber Tamblyn, but I was coming right out of having done a kids show when I started in daytime. I didn’t know anything about daytime television, and very little about the television medium in general. But from the time that I was there until now, what I’ve seen is that television in general has changed. People have changed. Women are working all the time now. That’s probably more common than not, whereas when soaps started that was not the case. I think the formats are changing with television, and as women are a huge contributing factor to the workforce, things have to change. Watching it struggle wasn’t fun. I think I came in at a time when it was already starting to struggle because I did hear a lot of stories about the heyday when I came in, like “Oh we use to have 75 million people who would watch Luke and Laura get married.” That’s outstanding. Television just doesn’t do that anymore in any form. It’s just changed. That’s been difficult but kind of expected. It’s been changing since I started and nothing stays the same. It’s got to change and keep up with changing formats. Maybe soaps become digital, maybe that’s the future. I don’t know.

I think that’s what Crystal is trying to explore; how to keep the genre alive that people love. I’m not sure, but I feel like there’s a really huge audience for soaps and the few left on the air have a dedicated, loving, loyal fanbase. I feel that the networks recognize that it’s valuable to keep that fan base happy and keep our soaps on the air, so perhaps they’ll tune in to watch all the other shows. Because you do not want to mess with soap fans! [laughs] You know when you’ve only got four shows, all four shows have to be running at the top of their game with the best people and out of that, new shows will be created.

The first season of Beacon Hill is available now at beaconhilltheseries.com

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button