Chat with Donna Mills for even a few moments, and you’ll ask yourself, “Why is this charming, funny, lovely woman always cast as a vicious, mean, manipulative shrew?” The answer, she says, is simple: “I’m lucky! I fight for those roles. The villain is always the most interesting character!”
That’s certainly the case in her latest project, which finds the actress — best known for her legendary run as Knots Landing vixen Abby — playing a dream-destroying, soul-crushing, money-loving matriarch in Lifetime’s four-part adaptation of V.C. Andrews’ Dawn.
The story centers on a young woman — named Dawn, if you hadn’t guessed — who finds her entire life turned upside down by a shocking revelation. This cruel twist of fate reunites Dawn with Mills’ Lillian, the grandmother who is as cruel as she is wealthy. “The hardest part was having to be mean to Brec Bassinger, the young actress who plays Dawn. She’s standing there with her lovely smile and she’s such a sweet girl, and I have to say and do some pretty terrible things to her!
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But that, says Mills, is all part of the job. “Playing the villain means you get to do all the things that you would never do in real life,” she says, adding with a laugh, “Or at least I wouldn’t!” (You can check out the trailer for Dawn below to see exactly what she means!)
Although Mills played many a good girl early in her career, including on soaps such as The Secret Storm and Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, she’s quick to admit, “I hated playing the victim.” So when the opportunity to play Abby arose, “I really fought for that. And once people saw what I did on Knots Landing, I didn’t have to fight as hard. Which is wonderful, because there’s so much more depth to a character like Abby or Lillian. You have to find a way to make the audience understand why they are the way they are.”
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Despite the California-set primetime sudser having ended its run in 1993, Mills says the question fans ask most often is when the show will return and whether she would step back into Abby’s power suits. “Yes, in a heartbeat,” she responds enthusiastically. “Fans don’t only ask about a reboot, but they want to know why they can’t watch it anywhere! It’s not streaming on Netflix or any other outlet, and they only released the first two seasons on DVD!”
One role Mills isn’t likely to revisit is that of General Hospital‘s Madeline… and not just because Nina’s mom was killed off. In fact, don’t expect her to pop up on any of the daytime soaps. “I loved everyone at General Hospital. I became good friends with Laura Wright (Carly), and [executive producer] Frank Valentini is just a doll. But the way they shoot soaps now is so hard. You might be shooting scenes for two or more episodes a day, and there’s no time to rehearse. It just wasn’t a very satisfying experience for me, as an actor.”
And while she’s currently working on a hush-hush new project, she’d love to step back into Lillian’s shoes at some point. Because while Dawn is a four-part event, with each two-hour movie covering one of the books in the original V.C. Andrews series, there is one tale left to be told. “Lifetime isn’t at this point doing the fifth book, Darkest Hour, which actually explains why Lillian is the way she is and what happened in the past to make her so vitriolic and mean. So I want them to do that book, too!”
Asked who should play the younger version of Lillian, Mills pauses. “You know, that’s a good question, and one I haven’t really thought about! I suppose I should figure that out if I’m going to keep asking Lifetime to make the movie!”
Although Knots Landing isn’t currently available for streaming, we’ve put together the ultimate photo album featuring dozens of our favorite memories. Check out the gallery below and join us as we return to Seaview Circle once more!
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