I feel blessed that this is the Blair that I dreamed. It’s all there. It’s like, I guess, how people must have felt when they first saw Vivien Leigh do Scarlett O’Hara; every nuance is there: She’s not just a manipulative bitch, she’s not just a neurotic, hurt child, she’s not just an incredibly sexual, powerful, intelligent woman - she’s all of those things at once.
And what amazes me is the subtlety of that range. Kassie can both show you someone trying to hurt Marty, trying to lash out and make somebody feel awful, at the same time that you see in her face why Blair is doing it - her nervousness that Marty understands something about Todd that she doesn’t understand; that Todd admires Marty in some ways that he doesn’t admire her. You can see all that vulnerability and insecurity and that fight-back-any-way-you-can all going on in Kassie’s face at the same time. And she can do everything - from the most powerful kind of drama of someone who lost her baby and lost her husband, to the French farce of the David Vickers/Madeline Helmore plot.
That’s an enormous range for an actress to undertake… and to do it day after day. It’s not as if she has eight weeks to rehearse the comedy or eight weeks to get deeply into the tragedy. Kassie just has to walk on that set and do it - and look gorgeous! She does it all. If she doesn’t get some kind of acknowledgement from the Emmy’s, there’s just no justice in this world!
- Michael Malone (OLTL head writer, 1991-1996)