Soap star in comedy

Press, 29 July 1987, Page 18

Soap star in comedy

The new comedy series “Our House” continues on Two tonight at 6.30. \ Deidre Hall stars as Jessie Witherspoon, a re- \ cently widowed mother of \ three, who takes her \ family to live with her elderly father-in-law, himself a widower for a number of years. Hall is no stranger to television audiences, having appeared as Dr Marlena Evans on the daytime soap opera, . “Days of our Lives,” for the past 10 years. She shares her thoughts on this new project: “I first heard about •Our House’ from my agent when the show was still called *l4 Napoleon Street’ My immediate response was that I loved the name and wanted to , read It. It arrived when I was working on the set of ‘Days of Our Lives’ and I couldn’t put it down. I read it so fast and reacted so strongly that when they called me to the set I bad been crying and had to go to make-up for a touch-up before I could go on stage!

“It’s been a treat working with Wllford (Brimley). You don't ‘act’ with Wllford — you talk with him. Alhough we run lines offstage, we never pre-set a scene. We may make a small word change here and there, but the difference is that we talk to each other. Actually, It’s like that off-camera, too. We have a family here and when we’re not in front of the camera, the family talks.