 Victoria Wyndham was one of the most seasoned and accomplished actresses in daytime soap opera television.  She played Rachel Cory, the maven of Another World's fictional town, Bay City, from 1972 to 1999 when the show went off the air.  Wyndham talks about how she was seen as the anchor of a show, and the political infighting to keep it on the air as NBC wanted to wrest control of the long-running soap from Procter & Gamble.  Wyndham fought to keep it on the air, but eventually succumbed to the inevitable.  She discusses life on the soap opera, and the seven years she spent wandering "in the woods" of Los Angeles seeking direction, now divorced from a character who had come to define her professional career.  Happy, healthy and with a family she is proud of, Wyndham has found life after the death of Another World in painting and animals.  Below is David Shankbone's interview with the soap diva.
((David Shankbone)) How are you doing?
((DS)) You look great. You look amazing.
((DS)) How’s the sculpture?
((DS)) Both of your sons have gone on to creative careers.  Christian Camargo is an actor, and the other is a photographer?
((DS)) When your sons decided that they wanted to pursue careers that were not so assured in income, like a lawyer or a doctor, but more something that is a creative enterprise like a photographer or an actor …
((DS)) As any mother would…
((DS)) How has it been since you left ‘Another World?’ 
((DS)) That’s after ‘Another World’?
((DS)) Anywhere. It doesn’t matter what it is. 
((DS)) Unrefined talent.
((DS)) Awesome. That’s big.
((DS)) They must get a kick out of that though. 
((DS)) When you’re known so well for one particular role--Rachel Cory in Another World--yet you are multi-dimensional, how do you handle the frustration that must breed inside yourself?
((DS)) But it doesn’t bother you to just be recognized for one role?
((DS)) You weren’t particularly happy with that story line though. At first you didn’t mind, but then after …
((DS)) Why?
((DS)) And you were one of the main draws on the show? So if they got rid of you …. 
((DS)) Why did they not want the show anymore?
((DS)) Flopped, like Passions did.  They were throwing midgets out there--
((DS)) How do you not let that go to your head? How do you keep calm after something like that?
((DS)) It’s tenuous, like a tooth hanging by a thread.
((DS)) NBC wanted all the profits.
((DS)) Is that the soap opera model, that there needs to be certain character anchors--like a Susan Lucci--on the show that exist and then they can kind of shuffle up the newer characters? 
((DS)) Although it’s a different idea because a soap is daily and you have people who watch it as if it’s a part of their lives opposed to a weekly drama. I mean, you were twenty-five years on ’Another World’ ….
((DS)) What was the updated version of soap operas that you envisioned?
((DS)) They would turn to you for ideas?
((DS)) And you also knew history.
((DS)) I read that they didn’t care about the history and the traditions in Another World?
((DS)) “She’ll never be able to play that off. He’ll be able to…..” That kind of stuff?
((DS)) Do you still keep in touch with a lot of the people from the show?
((DS)) Isn’t that odd?
((DS)) Do you find that that’s true in almost every friendship situation though?
((DS)) That there’s a need for commonality …..?
((DS)) They all move on to the next thing.
((DS)) What was that?
((DS)) What’s the fourth wall?
((DS)) Is that typical?
((DS)) Where do you think soaps are going to go now?
((DS)) Would you go back to one?
((DS)) But twenty-five years on a soap. It’s so funny to hear you say you weren’t interested. I understand you had your children. It was a good gig, steady income. It kept you on the east coast. 
((DS)) If you’re going to do something, do it well.
((DS)) Why do they not want to change?
((DS)) Where else do you see that in the culture?
((DS)) Or Showtime.
((DS)) You saw that with The Sopranos and Six Feet Under.
((DS)) Pay some writers.
((DS)) How does someone become a soap actor? Is it something they fall into or is it something that is pursued?
((DS)) And the emotion that goes with live performance.
((DS)) Really? Is it more of a function of modernity or more of a function of youth that they‘re like that?
((DS)) You’ve never wanted to do a film?
((DS)) Are you turning down projects now?
((DS)) You’re not at that point anymore where you need to work. 
((DS)) Every actor’s worry.
((DS)) Why haven’t you gone more toward the writing.
((DS)) Have you ever tried to use a pseudonym?
((DS)) Just for fun you should do it, just as an experiment. Change your name and send it. Be like, “Hi, I’m a young intrepid writer and I have this script.” Not just a soap opera actress.
((DS)) But the difference is what they say and what they do.  Show business is known as such a vicious industry. 
((DS)) To your face. 
((DS)) But isn’t that even more disenchanting when someone is like, “You’re the best. You’re so great.” And the next thing you know is, “That person thinks you suck.” And your like, “We just had this great meeting. I thought that they loved me.”
((DS)) How do you persevere? Even when you were younger and not in the comfortable place you are now?
((DS)) Aside from good acting, what was the secret to your longevity? It’s not just good acting that gets you staying around that long. 
((DS)) Or Norman Mailer …
((DS)) Are you putting yourself out there for roles?
((DS)) Do you think that that model where you have 23-year-olds playing 18-year-olds and you have 23-year-olds playing 30-year-olds is getting old? Don’t you think people are getting sick of seeing just …
((DS)) Yeah. Don’t you think it’s at the point where it’s becoming a farce? Is that really what people want?
((DS)) I understand the WB and UPN Networks that 16-year-olds want to watch people who look like they’re 16.
((DS)) That’s only a small portion of the populace. 
((DS)) Some realistic depictions of life or interesting stories that are well written, but not all played by people who are 22.
((DS)) Could people transcend that? I was watching The Sopranos last night and Lauren Bacall was on it and I was transfixed watching her. Is it more because it’s Lauren Bacall or is it more so just cause it’s just interesting? Remember like the mother on that show ….
((DS)) So it’s laziness that’s giving us all of this all of this, “Oh just throw on a smooth skin and thus we don’t have to worry about the writing as much. We don’t have to worry about whether the story is engaging.”
((DS)) Which Showtime repeated.
((DS)) But they’ve got fat people. They’ve got short people. They’ve got nerds.
((DS)) Normal people. And that was wildly popular.
((DS)) It’s self defeating because in the end people stop watching.
((DS)) Why is it so difficult to see?
((DS)) Where do you think the disconnect is? Do you think it’s a disconnect between people who don’t know their product that they have on the air, like you have executives who really don’t follow it and it is what it is and stick with it?
((DS)) It’s the teenagers who come home from school 
((DS)) Do you still get mobbed on the streets when you walk?
((DS)) How does that feel? Is it strange for you, because you probably were accustomed to that for so long?
((DS)) To just walk into Saks and shop and not have it.
((DS)) Is it annoying to talk about Rachel Cory still?
((DS)) Were there certain writers who you just had it out with and you were like, ‘This is just not going to go?’
((DS)) Is there any that stand out that you‘d want to name?
((DS)) They were that bad? You remember the good ones, but not the bad ones? 
((DS)) Matriarch.
((DS)) What would be one story line that really stands out to you that you were like, “why didn’t we explore this more? This was an important issue.”
((DS)) Do you believe in a higher power?
((DS)) What is that higher power?
((DS)) Do you go to church?
((DS)) Do you pray?
((DS)) Daily?
((DS)) It’s when you feel moved?
((DS)) Why do you think it’s difficult for people to pull instinct out from inside themselves and actually use it?  As an actor, as an artist on any level, you have to? It’s almost like this little well inside yourself that when you get those little goose bumps and say, ’Oh, this is good.’
((DS)) You have to go with it. But there’s a lot of people who, even if they have that feeling they talk themselves down from it. “Oh, this is actually crap. Oh, this is bad. Oh, this is stupid.”
((DS)) How do you hold on to that feeling without talking yourself down from it?
((DS)) In what way?
((DS)) It took the art out of it?
((DS)) It must get tiresome to constantly need to educate a new person every time, especially if they didn‘t get it and  you’re like, ‘No, that’s not what I was saying. This was what I was saying. You misunderstood.’
((DS)) The kids were grown up and you didn’t have to be back here anymore so you tried California?
((DS)) But don’t you feel better for having done it and knowing as opposed to always wondering?
((DS)) How did you get out of that wilderness?
((DS)) That was seven years? Seven years in Tibet?
((DS)) What’s his name?
((DS)) How did you meet him?
((DS)) L.A. is a mess, and you always get stuck in traffic.
((DS)) So the class that you were in was not interesting, but you went to another class?
((DS)) The gooseflesh.
((DS)) What did it end up doing for you?
((DS)) What did you do with that experience? You came back to the east coast?
((DS)) And there’s nothing you can do about it?
((DS)) Charles Keating?
((DS)) And that pulled you out of this funk?
((DS)) When did you decide to leave and come back?
((DS)) What was that panic?
((DS)) I’m not getting calls.
((DS)) Was that hard being divorced from that character?
((DS)) How is the inspiration for the art different from the inspiration you would draw for characters?
((DS)) Totally different worlds. 
((DS)) What is it that you’re saying now in your art?
((DS)) If you could choose the way you die, how would you choose?
((DS)) And if there is a God, and you went up there, what do you think God would say to you?
((DS)) But say it’s true.
((DS)) And do you think He would? Or she?
((DS)) It’s true. Has the Iraq war affected you? 
((DS)) How so?
((DS)) Do you think the country has changed?
((DS)) I got into an argument when I was in law school. My professor came out against this really famous opinion which was almost what our entire notions of free speech are called California v. Whitney. It was written by this very famous justice about a hundred years ago named Brandeis.
((DS)) Yeah. And he said in my class and I—something that law students don’t do; I didn’t fit in very well there—I took him on in the middle of 120 students and said, “I can’t believe you would say that he would not write that opinion today.” And he said, ‘Everything’s changed.  It is thinking like yours that is why we discuss torture.”
((DS)) Oh he said that we have religious extremism now. We can’t tell who are our enemies.  We have all these new things. And I said, ‘All of these things have existed in the past just because they are wrapped up in a different package or it’s a new mixture of ingredients doesn’t change them. In Vietnam we had people who were disguised as regular Vietnamese, driving our jeeps and blowing up our bases. That’s not anything different than what we have now. I said we had the first World Trade Center attack where that happened. That’s not a reason to all of a sudden start questioning our free speech rights just because it’s dressed up in a different package.
((DS)) World War I, IRA. That was Protestant versus Catholic regligious extremism.  The UK had that. Just because we as Americans haven’t seen a certain kind of thing before doesn’t mean it’s new.
((DS)) It’s amazing that we debate these things now.

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Victoria Wyndham on Another World and another life