Woman On The Verge ...

Woman on the Verge of Another Nervous Breakdown:
GL's Holly Faces Life Without Fletcher, Her Daughter, And Roger

Soap Opera Weekly, March 17, 1998
Strictly Storyline
By Mark McGarry

It's the end of an era this week on Guiding Light. Roger decides to leave Springfield and his beloved Holly, and he will probably never return. Certainly another actor won't play Roger: Fans never accepted Dennis Parlato, who replaced Michael Zaslow a year ago when Zaslow became ill. Maureen Garrett, as Holly, found herself in an interesting position. She had to accept Roger-it was her job-even though she felt the same way as the fans: There is only one Roger Thorpe.

"I do wish Dennis Parlato could just come through town again and we could call him Slim and start all over again," says Garrett, who spoke with Soap Opera Weekly shortly after taping the final Roger/Holly scene. "Those last scenes just reverberated such a milestone that I couldn't lose myself in it. In a way, I felt that it was my tribute to Michael Zaslow-'Just couldn't do it without you, babe.'"

Garrett hasn't spoken out much about the Zaslow situation, but wanted to talk about it now since the Roger/Holly story has come to an end. She was aware of the postings on the Internet and letters from fans rejecting Parlato, but, she says, "There was just nothing to say to them. I wasn't interested in being on the chat lines or grist for any rumor mills. It was such a private matter. "

"It's interesting," Garrett continues. "The show wrote around [the recast] so that it hasn't been Roger. There was no manipulative side. He was a concerned father instead. It was when we played these final scenes and reviewed our past... It's all about the Roger before. It brought it all back to me. I had to write on the script, 'Don't think Zas.' When I was working on it I would get lost, and it would trip me up. There were so many obstacles. Saying goodbye to Roger was an impossible talk. It's one of the toughest things that I have ever had to do."

According to Garrett, associate head writer Nancy Williams Watt wrote the goodbye scenes. "She also had a hard time, because she was writing it with Michael Zaslow in mind. They were wonderfully written. Holly has a line where she says that when she first met Roger, she was like a kid with a box of matches. You know it's dangerous and that you should resist, but you just can't, and you light it and the whole thing blows up in your face."

Holly doesn't know how right she is: Fletcher sees Holly kissing Roger and jumps to the wrong conclusion. He takes Meg and leaves town. It will be a one-two punch for Holly, who will find out next week that Fletcher has left her. It's also a blow for Garrett, who is not only losing Roger (Parlato last airs March 16) but also longtime friend and co-star Jay Hammer (Fletcher).

Garrett taped her last scene with Hammer right after her final scenes with Parlato. "They did it all in one day," she says, "I was quite beside myself. I became very aware that this would be the last time I would be playing with my buddy. I started blubbering in the scene, and I was afraid that I would lose it entirely. When it was over, I was in a hospital bed, and I had to put the covers over my head so nobody could see me so I could have a good cry. I felt so exposed."

Holly will have to live with the guilt of knowing that Fletcher left with Meg because of her involvement-however innocent-with Roger. "By always begin sucked in by temptation, she destroyed when she had with Fletcher, which was the one good thing she had," Garrett says. "The thing with Roger was never any good, and the guilt is going to cause her to spiral downward."

Again.

Historically, Holly has never been the most stable woman. She's needy. She's needed Roger even when she insisted she didn't. "She has that co-dependency, that neurotic attachment, something that pulls her off her center," Garrett explains. "There is always some kind of chaos in her that can't ever be settled. That was the thing with Roger. There was something within her that could never be satisfied."

A bright spot in this storyline shake-up is that Garrett returns to the front burner. There's been talk that Holly will grow closer to baby Maureen, to whom she has given a part of herself. "Holly is the godmother, and she has given the child her kidney and her blood, so she is pretty attached," Garrett says. "They may go somewhere with that since Meg will be gone.

Meg has a fabulous moment when she waves goodbye to the house. It was heartbreaking for us all. We were like, 'That's it-there's the money shot.'" "Holly has lost everything. I'm looking forward to playing this. It's more fun to play when there is an edge. I understand that a lot of the women characters are losing it on GL."

Garrett doesn't think it will happen, but Zaslow could possibly return to the role of Roger. The actor has been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which Roger could also develop. "I would love to play a scene with him and let Roger and Holly have their real goodbye," she says. "I think the audience misses him a lot, and I would be honored to do it."

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