INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS TEMPLETON:

RGP: Thank you for taking the time, Chris. I just wanted to begin this by asking you to tell me a little bit about your career and what you’re doing now and kind of orient everybody as to where you are.

CT: Okay. My career involves twenty years in Los Angeles, eleven of which were working on "The Young and the Restless" and doing prime time episodic stuff, you know, episodes. I don’t know how detailed you want to get. I don’t know if you want to ask detailed questions. What I am doing now is I’m retired, not necessarily by choice but because the work just seemed to stop and I couldn’t see sitting around Los Angeles waiting for someone else to control my life so I just left. I put a lot of time into it and the industry seemed to just not be interested in disability in television anymore.

RGP: When did that happen?

CT: I left L.A. about two or three years ago.

RGP: Is this a pretty common perception, that the industry doesn’t hire disabled actors any longer?

CT: Well, you know, I had just about the best résumé of anybody out there and for me not to be able to get work after all the work that I put in seems kind of strange to me. You know what I mean? I also was a manager for a year so I got the breakdowns and I knew what was out there and I saw who was being submitted and I had disability clients and I couldn’t get them work and I could see why I wasn’t getting work because there was nothing out there. The producers and casting people weren’t open to putting disabled people in able-bodied roles, but they would put able-bodied people in disabled roles so there was an inequity there and our community has since then suffered from it.

RGP: What changed? Were there less scripts?

CT: When I first came to town everybody was experimenting with disability. You know, they were being open-minded and they did their one what we called "gimp show" a year and it was inspirational. You know, either a gimp was dating somebody or somebody was dating a gimp.

RGP: That was in the 80’s, you mean?

CT: In the 80’s, yeah. You know, that became old pretty quickly and I was brought on "The Young and the Restless" to deal with disability, but they wanted to make me a victim and exploit it and I was not into that so I then sort of tied their hands and they didn’t know what to do with me so I was basically a backburner character for eleven years which is very frustrating because there was all this potential there to make a difference and the producers of my soap just didn’t get it. They felt I was lucky to have a job, which I was, and I felt they were lucky to have me, which they were, but they didn’t think so. You know what I mean? They could have done so much more and instead they chose not to which was very frustrating for me because I sort of took on the burden of the responsibility of every disabled person in the world, you know, thinking here I could make such a difference and my hands are tied and I’m not making the kind of difference I could and that was extremely hard so I just had to give it up.

RGP: Do you think this was an issue with the writers or the producers? I mean, if the producers decided that there was a market there for them which is what they are looking at, do you feel the writers were up to the task or was it a problem…?

CT: I’m sure the writers were up to the task. I just don’t think people believe in it. They just don’t want to…I think that it follows through unfortunately that people just don’t want to look at disability, period, which I think is a real shame. No matter how you candy coat it or what you put on it to make it look more attractive, the bottom line is that unless you get somebody out there like they’re doing with PSI like David Hall it’s just not going to happen. The individual person trying to be out there doing it by themselves has got just no chance. That’s what I was doing at the end. I had absolutely no support from anyone, trying to still do it by myself and I just couldn’t do it. It’s kind of like this last year when the black community won all of the Academy Awards. Each person that got up there, even Sidney Poitier that got up to accept his award, thanked his support group, thanked the people that pushed him all the years. You know what I mean? He absolutely did not take credit by himself. It was a group effort. And unless you have that group effort behind you, you can’t do it. You just can’t do it. And so I felt that at the time that I left L.A. whatever group support I had had in the past was gone and I couldn’t do it by myself.

RGP: And they were gone because…?

CT: I don’t know. They were moving on to other things.

RGP: You said that people don’t want to look at people with disability. Do you think that is a perception that is incorrect or do you think that is the truth?

CT: No, I think it’s the producers that don’t want to. I don’t think it’s the people because that was sort of proven to me when I was on "The Young and the Restless" because I was kind of like their uppity gimp. You know what I mean? I was that awful expression "uppity nigger". You know, well, that was me. I was the one that was trying to be treated just like everybody else, but there is an inherent prejudice.

RGP: On the set, you mean? Not in your character?

CT: Politically. Not my character but just in the hiring process in Los Angeles I wanted a storyline. I wanted to be treated like everyone else. Here I was being hired to do prime time guest stars on all kinds of stuff and yet I was kept in small scenes on the soap, as a background character basically, because they just didn’t get it.

RGP: There seems to be more leeway in books than there is in…

CT: Well, books you can read. It’s not something that you have to do. You choose to buy a book. You don’t choose to watch television like you choose to buy a book. But what my point was, whenever they tried to keep me down on the soap the public would rise me back up. If they wanted it, if they wanted to see it, they supported it. They still do. I’m out here in Texas doing all kinds of charity work and using "The Young and the Restless" to push things forward to make money for like the American Cancer Society and stuff like that. After my storyline had ended on the soap and I didn’t have a storyline for four years, I was voted fourth most recognizable, second or fourth, something like that, way up there, most recognizable female in a soap opera. I hadn’t had a storyline for two years, but the people, the readers, still recognized me as someone that they wanted to see.

RGP: That is incredible.

CT: Well, I’m not really sure that there wasn’t somebody in "The Young and the Restless" hierarchy that was sort of blackballing me too because I did a movie a couple of years after I got off the soap and the producer of the movie had a friend who was going to be in it and that friend said to him, "Well, you know, Chris is hard to work with" and he had known me from "The Young and the Restless". Mark looked at him and said, "What are you talking about" and so that was the word around the set that I was hard to work with. Now, I had never heard that before. I had one person in that hierarchy whose head I always went over in order to do prime time stuff and so you begin to wonder, okay, well, what are you being set up for? You know what I mean? How far does it go? What do they do to make sure that…maybe I’m being paranoid. I don’t know, but I’ve talked to other people about this, people that are in the business, and this is what happens. You present a picture of somebody that somebody doesn’t want to look at or see and I’m talking about the disability in a broad scope because I was political and on a kind of political level you start making noise and people try to shut you down. So I think that’s pretty much what happens.

RGP: Well, that’s unfortunate. You’re obviously not happy about it.

CT: Well, who would be?

RGP: Of course.

CT: I love working. I mean, that’s all I really ever wanted to do was work.

RGP: Are you working theater in Texas?

CT: No, I haven’t yet.

RGP: Is that a different environment though or don’t you know?

CT: I don’t know. I’m kind of scared to do theater. I know it sounds weird after having to memorize all that stuff on the soap, but I’m just kind of scared to do that. It’s the words, I mean, memorizing the whole script and having to do it every night over and over and over again just scares me to death.

RGP: It would scare me.

CT: I grew up acting on television. I learned how to cry on camera. I didn’t learn how to do it in class. You know, I learned how to do it on camera so you get me in an audition and I have to cry and I can’t do it, but you put me in front of the camera and I have to and it’s right there.

RGP: Well, that’s interesting.

CT: It’s just the way I learned. You know what I mean? Maybe I didn’t take it far enough. You know what I mean? I should have gone the further step. I don’t know. It’s weird. But I loved it. I absolutely loved working. I’m sorry that politics got involved and I’m sorry that my support group fell away. You know what I mean? Because I could have used their help.

RGP: I understand. Have you ever used your acting talents in real life to get through situations that you were maybe scared of and maybe to gain confidence in certain situations? I mean, there’s something to be said for it. You know, I do it. Sometimes I will simply act like I’m confident even when I’m not and eventually you gain that. You gain that confidence and it’s a technique a lot of patients use.

CT: I don’t think so. I don’t consciously do that.

RGP: It’s a technique and it’s a positive technique. There are people, patients of mine, who have situations that they are either embarrassed about or whatever it is they are reluctant to engage in these activities although they want to and one way that they get over it is to just kind of take a deep breath and do it but almost by sometimes adopting qualities they are not really sure they have. You know what I’m trying to say? I mean, adopting courage they’re not sure they have, but as they go through the process they kind of acquire courage.

CT: Well, I don’t think I do it in an acting sense. I think I do it just because I need to do it. You know what I mean? Going out into the Hollywood arena as a person…my mom always used to say…I would say to her that I must be a masochist because it was so scary. You know what I mean? It’s something that you have to do. It’s like growing up with a disability there are always going to be people…well, like when we were kids. You’d walk by a playground and other kids would yell weird things at you and it would be cruelty, but you knew you had to walk past that school ground anyway every day so you just had to buck up and deal with it. You’d be over it in two or three minutes. It’d be gone and it’d be behind you and so I think that’s basically the way I approached things then.

RGP: You’ve described some of the problems you’ve had sort of on the back end of your time in L.A. What about on the front end? How did you get yourself noticed?

CT: Well, I went to L.A. A friend of mine found an article in some sort of newspaper that talked about Fern Fields and I think Lorene _____ might have been in there and how they would try to get people with disabilities into the industry, to subliminally educate people, I guess. So I went to L.A. and actually Fern told me to go home. I stayed, luckily, and I was at a seminar and two men overheard me talking to someone and they asked me if I was an actress and asked me if I had an 8x10 and a résumé. One was a VP at CBS and one was a VP at ABC. Through the ABC guy I got my first series and my agent and through the CBS guy I got "The Young and the Restless".

RGP: That’s interesting. How long were you in L.A. before that happened?

CT: Two years. It happened real fast. I was really on the cutting edge. I was there in the right place at the right time.

RGP: I don’t quite understand why producers have this attitude. I mean, there have certainly been successes. "Ironside" was a success, wasn’t it? And that was in the 80’s.

CT: He couldn’t do anything by himself. He was a big huge man in a wheelchair and he couldn’t even push his own wheelchair. That was a little unrealistic.

RGP: True, but it was still a commercial success and that’s their argument. Their argument seems to be that it will not be a commercial success and I guess I don’t quite understand why they feel that way. Have there been notable disasters?

CT: Not that I’m aware of. You know, a lot of times too it’s that they don’t feel that the talent is available. I don’t know what the deal is. It was "Love Boat" and they brought us all in, us girls, to audition for this part and it was the first time that anybody ever said that I was too old for a part. Then I saw who they actually used and they used another girl who was my same age and I certainly didn’t look any older than she did. They put me through all this trauma of telling me that I was too old and all they really wanted to do was just use a star. So they brought us in to audition because they felt that they had to and they really wanted to use a star so they had to think up excuses not to use us and my particular one was that I was too old. I did like fifteen guest stars on prime time television and I had such a great time and I loved it. It was so much fun. The converse side to having a small role on "The Young and the Restless" allowed me to go out and do the prime time stuff which was excellent so I got the best of both worlds even though politically it was difficult because it saddened me. I just felt like I had so much more potential than that. I still feel like I never really scratched the surface of what I could do.

RGP: What do you look for in the future for yourself?

CT: Oh, I have no idea.

RGP: How long have you been in Texas?

CT: Just about a year now. I definitely want to act again, but I don’t think it will ever happen. You sort of have to be in L.A. in order to make it happen and I’m not willing to sit there. You know, I just don’t know if I’ve got the energy to beat the bushes again. It would literally be starting all over again.

RGP: Well, I can understand the reluctance to do that.

CT: At 20 you’ve got the energy to do that. You’re stupid. You’re naïve. You just know that you’re going to do it and that everything is going to be okay. But at this stage it’s like, "Oh, lordy!" You know what I mean? I just don’t know if I could do that. Not that I wouldn’t love to. Not that I don’t have an agent there.

RGP: Is there anything that people who support this cause, people with disabilities and illnesses who are not actors and actresses but understand what you’re talking about and what I’m trying to talk about…is there anything they can do to develop a constituency for you and actors and actresses like you that would help?

CT: Yeah, write letters. I mean, letters make so much difference. They figure one letter represents at least 100 people and if you’re writing letters to the soap opera or to any kind of prime time episodic thing that uses any person in any kind of scene that has a disability and if you write a letter to encourage those producers in casting people and whatever to further use people and thank them for what they have done it makes a big difference. So yes, letters, phone calls, stuff like that.

CT: I think that’s really important. Because at that point if you have thousands of people that are logging on to you on a regular basis and you have a bulletin board that says you need to write a letter saying this and this to this producer and give an address and those people follow through, then you’ve got a huge, huge arm of action going on there that’s not been before and I think that would make a huge difference.

RGP: Well, that’s an interesting idea. Thank you, Chris.

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