Title: SID: Simple Gifts
Description: Octover 25, 2005
Description: Octover 25, 2005
Jermetria - September 1, 2007 04:48 PM (GMT)
As Kendall's life grows more complicated, Alicia Minshew relishes easy pleasures anywhere she can find them.
ALL MY CHILDREN's Kendall Hart Slater, elder daughter of the house of Kane, can be a smidge difficult to please. Not so with her portrayer, whose first order of business on her first day off in quite some time is to indulge in the most ordinary of beauty rituals: Alicia Minshew is getting a pedicure.
"I'm in dire need," she says, laughing in mock embarrassment. "I actually have scenes where someone has to touch my feet, and I am just horrified if they have to touch my feet when they're like this."
If fan mail and Internet message-board postings are any indication, fans of the show would be very happy if the aforementioned foot-rubbing was performed by Zach, Kendall's rakish husband of convenience, played by Thorsten Kaye. The popularity of the unlikely pairing, as well as Kendall's role right smack in the expanding middle of the Greenlee surrogacy story, means Minshew's had little free time in the past few months.
"Sometimes I'm so exhausted," she says. "I'll have taped seven shows, and it's Friday and I'm going, 'Oh my God, I'm spent. I have nothing left.' But then you get up there and you do it. You just sort of tap into your character."
Lucky for Minshew, Kendall's an ever flowing spring of both true passion and catty one-liners. "I like it because she's so multidimensional. She's not just a one note character. I never know what she's going to do," she says. "I don't know if she's going to laugh, if she's going to cry, if she's going to yell."
Delicious Anticipation
When she does yell, Mrs. Slater's often aiming at her hubby, who Minshew says Kendall is actually ---gasp!--- falling for. The actress attributes the heat of her scenes with Kaye to the case of their off-screen friendship. "God, the way he looks at her is to die for," Minshew says. "I say, 'You did it that time, Toastie. You gave me the chills.' He's like, 'Well, you know, what can I cay?'"
If those chills continue, it's not likely the Slaters' union will remain merely a business one for much longer. Everyone, including Minshew's family and friends, want to see those two crazy con artists make it work.
"[My mother] really loves us together," Minshew says. "She keeps saying, 'Com on! When are the clothes going to come off? When are you at least going to kiss?' And I said, 'Mom, I honest-to-God don't know!'" Even Richie Hersch, Minshew's boyfriend and Kaye's best friend, is waiting for the day. "We always joke about this," she says. "He keeps saying, 'Didja kiss him yet?'"
Though she swears she's not privy to the Slaters' romantic schedule, Minshew does know this: "It's on such a deep level that if and when it happens, it's gonna be so tremendous."
Keeping Kendall Real
As excited as Minshew is fore Kendall to be her own kind of wife and mother, sometimes the character's legendary cynicism can be tough to find among the baby booties and Cupid's arrows. "I hope that [Kendall] does not lose her edginess because that's what's so fun about her. But then I look at her mother. Com on! Erica Kane has kids, and she's edgy. So I think, 'Okay. Like mother, like daughter,'" Minshew says. "Every now and then, I'll look for a moment when I can have a snide, sarcastic comment or make it about me for a minute," Minshew says.
What comes naturally to the self-centered Kendall, though, can be an effort for the hard-working woman who plays her. On rare free afternoons like this one, Minshew relishes a solitary run through New York's Central Park, a massage or a lazy lunch with Hersch --- "Simple things like that," she says. "I'm very big with having dinner and just relaxing with a bottle of wine and friends and being mellow. Good quality time."
But really knowing Kendall means lots of preparation, and Minshew's evening will be filled with learning lines for Kendall's multiple scenes this week. The actress wouldn't have it any other way. "It's a lot of work, but it's definitely more interesting to play," she says. "She definitely keeps me on my toes."
Which, by the way, Minshew elected to paint violet.
~ Kimberly Roots