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Texarkana Gazette 6/8/06: Forbes March

NScene TV: Soap star contest begins tonight
Thursday, June 8, 2006 10:09 AM CDT

By JODI SHERIDAN Texarkana Gazette

Beginning tonight on SOAPnet, contestants from all over will battle, cry, slap and yell it out to be the next soap star.

“I Wanna Be A Soap Star” begins its third season tonight at 10.

It starts off with an “American Idol”-esque feeling, where instead of singing, people are coming in by droves to act in front of judges.

The thousands who show up are whittled down to a final group of 10, who compete each week in different scenes in their ultimate quest to be the next soap star.

The prize? A 13-week contract role on ABC’s “One Life to Live.”

The show is hosted by Cameron Mathison, who plays Ryan Lavery on “All My Children.” The judges include bigtime soap talent agent Michael Bruno, actress Debbie Morgan and “OLTL” casting director Julie Madison.

And along the way the lucky contestants, or unlucky depending on how you look at it, will be visited by some veteran soap stars.

They include, from “OLTL,” Forbes March (Nash), Melissa Archer (Natalie) and Catherine Hickland (Lindsay). Also making stops by will be Corbin Bernsen (ex-Durant) from “General Hospital” and Julie Pinson (Billie) from “Days of Our Lives.”

The previous two seasons of the show gave winners 13-week contract roles on “General Hospital” and “All My Children.”

Alec Musser, who won the “All My Children” season, got his contract extended, however, and is still in Pine Valley as Del, proving you can get somewhere by winning this contest.


Alec Musser, who won the “All My Children” season, got his contract extended, however, and is still in Pine Valley as Del, proving you can get somewhere by winning this contest.

During the short time they compete, contestants will have to master the skills of daytime legends, and they are immediately thrown into the mix of the fast-paced world of daytime with a bus crash scene.

The contestants will also have to learn the art of the love scene, how to pull off a wintry scene with lots of costume layers, how to deal with ghostly encounters from the past, how good it is to be bad and the nature of the daytime diva.

After each scene, they are evaluated and one is “killed off.”

But according to SOAPnet, “in true soap style being ‘killed off’ doesn’t mean that you can’t return from the dead.”

The episode that airs tonight features the initial audition process, where folks lined up from all around to get a chance for soap stardom.

And there were the good, the bad, and the really, really bad.

One lady said she liked “dirty old men,” while one man thought he looked like James Dean, when really he looked more like Pat Morita.

Another young lady was a death scene master, especially a death scene in which she was shot while figure skating. Fun stuff.

The premiere also gives us a chance to size up the judges. If you had to compare them to “American Idol,” both Debbie and Julie are more the Randy Jackson-types, caring and gentle, yet truthful.

Bruno was more the Simon Cowell type, just not so nasty.

He quips in the episode, “I’m always the bad guy.”

Thankfully for us, none of them even remotely resembles the babbling Paula Abdul.

It’s highly entertaining all in all, and worth your time to tune in.

© Texarkana Gazette

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