Soap Opera Digest General Hospital’s Kelly Monaco Offers A Revealing Backstage Look at Dancing with the Stars
Over the years she’s been very candid about who she is and where she came from. The new issue of Soap Opera Digest (Cover Date: July 26, 2005) takes an even closer look at Kelly’s journey to become America’s Dancing Queen on ABC-TV’s mega primetime hit, Dancing with The Stars
New York (PRWEB) July 18, 2005 -- Soap Opera Digest, America’s first
authority on soaps has been documenting Kelly Monaco’s career since she joined
ABC-TV’s Port Charles in the vampire-loving dual role of “Livvie / Tess.”
Following the show’s cancellation in June, 2003, Monaco moved to sister show,
General Hospital, as rough-around-the-edges Samantha “Sam” McCall.”
Over
the years she’s been very candid about who she is and where she came from. The
new issue of Soap Opera Digest (Cover Date: July 26, 2005) takes an even closer
look at Kelly’s journey to become America’s Dancing Queen on ABC-TV’s mega
primetime hit, Dancing with The Stars.
“It’s crazy!” marvels Monaco of
her win on the nation’s No. 1 prime-time show. “We came a long freaking way,”
she notes of partner Alec (Mazo). “I had to come up to his level and show him
support because he had been supporting me for the last five weeks, so (winning)
feels pretty good.”
As for that “judgmental” tongue-lashing she got for
not smiling early on, Monaco gave Soap Opera Digest the real scoop. “It was the
American Smooth Waltz. Our song was “I Have Nothing” by Whitney Houston. The
story we were telling was, “I’m going to kill myself if I don’t have you.” It
didn’t call for cheesy smiles, she explains. “And one of the comments was, “You
looked like you got out of the hospital. Did somebody die in the family?” Turns
out, they weren’t too far off. Monaco had a secret. She’d had oral surgery prior
to the dance off. “I wasn’t going to make excuses for myself at the time, but
little did they know I had 15 stitches in the roof of my mouth. I had just
gotten back from the hospital. But I wasn’t going to say anything.”
In a
feature interview from March 2004: “I pride myself on the people in my life. I
treat my friends like family and I am extremely loyal to all of them. I’d give
my left leg to one of them if they needed it.” When asked why she decided to
stay in soaps when PC was cancelled, Kelly said, “I knew that I wanted to stay
in daytime, it’s funny because I actually had battles with my manager and
agents, who didn’t want me to stay in soaps. I love the genre, I love the
consistency and I haven’t mastered my craft here yet.”
The previous year
(2003), the actress revealed, “I’m not a girly girl, I was a tomboy my whole
life. Living in Philadelphia, (some of the neighborhood kids) used to call us
the Sewer Rat Gang – me and my sisters and the kids from the block,” Monaco
recalled. “We used to open the lids to the sewers, dangle our feet and see who
could climb down the sewer the furthest without falling in. We were hanging out
in a disease-infested sewer thinking we were the coolest kids in town.” Her
subdued nature, she acknowledges, has often been confused with snobbery. “Some
people mistake silence for being arrogant or snotty, and it’s not, I’m just
protecting myself.” It was in this interview that Monaco told Soap Opera Digest
that she’s been a vegetarian for 16 years. “I had food poisoning when I was
little, so psychologically, I never got over that.”
Billed as the
“comeback kid” in the finale of Dancing with the Stars, Kelly Monaco’s quote in
a 2002 interview seems quite telling, “When I come into something new, I sit
back and watch. I’ve got to assess my environment before I open my big
mouth.”
# # #
Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/7/prweb262643.htm