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Susan Lucci always has time for an All My Children fan.
Appearing on the latest episode of the Soapy podcast by CBS, Lucci, 78, told cohosts Rebecca Budig and Greg Rikaart about her new project, Outcome, written and directed by Jonah Hill. Lucci says she was touched that Hill, an All My Children fan, had her in mind for her role.
“I received this script. I was told I was receiving this script from Jonah Hill for his movie, and it’s for Apple Plus. And my name was watermarked, ‘Susan Lucci’ was watermarked. It was an offer. And I read this script, and the part, it’s not a big part, but it’s pretty sizable, the scene, and very powerful,” she shared.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is really something, and this is challenging.’ But it was gonna require me to go to a place I thought I was still too raw to go to. Not that it’s literally the same rawness or same place that caused the rawness, but I was just coming out of it being that raw,” she explained.
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“And I thought, ‘This is probably just not good for me to do. I don’t know… It’s good for my career to do, but I know as a human being, it’s probably not good.”
Lucci told her publicist she didn’t think she could take the role and figured that was the end of it. Then, she decided to revisit the script.
“I couldn’t help myself. I started working on this character. And I thought, ‘Maybe I should read this again in the light of day. Maybe I should give it another go around because, God, I would hate to watch this and see some other actress take the challenge, and I didn’t take the challenge.’ ”
Her reconsideration was further pushed by hearing from Hill himself, who asked her to reconsider.
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“Jonah Hill called me. He really did have me in mind for this part… And he was so lovely and wonderful to talk to, and I could tell he was really invested in this,” she said, noting he’d been an AMC viewer.
“By the time we finished talking, I was like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna talk in the morning.’ I mean, when I hung up, I had this, talk about catharsis, I had this enormous cathartic gratitude that this came my way and that I was going to accept that challenge and I was going to do it the best I could. And I love that feeling, so I did take it and I was so thrilled.”
The project has given her the opportunity to work with Keanu Reeves, who the actress says is “spectacular to work with.”
“Wow. A real actor. I mean, we did about four passes at it, just between ourselves. And he said, ‘God, I wish we were doing this on Broadway.’ And I said, ‘So do I,’ because you keep finding things.”
