Photo Credit: Sue Coflin/Max Photos

When One Life to Live has its online premiere on Monday, April 29th on Hulu, Hulu Plus, and iTunes, two powerhouse actresses set the stage for some emotional drama that will pull you in and leave you breathless, and maybe speechless, when all-new episodes begin!  Of course, we are talking about the talented on-screen mother/daughter duo of Florencia Lozano (Tea Delgado) and Kelley Missal (Dani Manning).  When One Life begins anew, viewers will learn what has happened to Tea, who is still reeling from the loss of her husband Victor Jr. and her little baby boy, while Dani is seeking comfort, but has turned to drugs!  This sets the stage for turmoil and angst!  And, who better to play that than scene-stealing Lozano, and the alluring Missal?

On-Air On-Soaps chatted with Florencia and Kelley to get a preview of: what has happened to two of One Life’s favorite gals when the story resumes in Llanview, their thoughts on the cancellation of the series, and having it brought back to life by Prospect Park, and the undying persistence and power of the shows legions of fans … plus, getting the opportunity to work with Roger Howarth (Todd Manning) again, and Kelley adjusting to the new SORAS’d Matthew in actor Robert Gorrie!

With so many fans concerns of the new One Life being edgier, sexier, and bolder, Missal points out in our conversation that it does come out of story, and it’s not just thrown in gratuitously into the show!  While that should come as a relief to many, still others are wondering if Tea will ever come to know the fact that her presumed dead husband, Victor Jr. (Trevor St. John) is alive, after fans discovered the character was being held captive at the end of the ABC One Life finale? Lozano reveals her hopes for her character and the struggles Tea faces with her daughter, who is all grown up and stirring up trouble all over town.  It’s t-minus less than 24 hours till the return of One Life to Live!  So let’s kick-off the celebration with the fabulous Florencia and Kelley!

MICHAEL:

Florencia, how has this tumultuous turn of events been for you?  First, One Life is canned by ABC.  Next, Prospect Park was going to bring it back, only that did not happen on their first attempt.  Next, you head to General Hospital to be a key component of the baby-switch story where Tea’s baby with Victor Jr. is switched with Sam’s baby, thanks in part to Todd Manning!  Now Prospect Park has the show in production in a magical way with all systems go for tomorrow’s online debut, and Tea is back in Llanview!

FLORENCIA:

Courtesy/ABC

First, I have to say, being on General Hospital was a blast.  I had a great time.  I honestly went with the flow.  I didn’t expect One Life to Live to have another life.  I am incredibly surprised in a very happy way that we are doing it again.  I didn’t have any expectations that we would be doing the show again, and so I didn’t stress on whether it was going to happen, or not.  I really didn’t think it would happen and I believed it was dead in the water.  So, it’s been amazing to get to go back.

MICHAEL:

Tea Delgado has always been one of my favorite characters on One Life to Live.  She always has so much gut-wrenching stuff going on, and she can be powerful, and a spitfire to boot!  Will we see that again on the new One Life?  Will Tea be similar to how she was previously?

FLORENCIA:

Oh hell, yes!  And, Kelley is fantastic.  It’s true!  I would say that Kelley, even if you were not chatting with us in this interview.  Kelley is getting to do some really fun stuff, and so now it’s really fun to play the mother/daughter material.  Tea is of the mindset: “She is getting older … she is challenging.  I love her, and she is driving me crazy.  There are moments where I want to kill her and she wants to kill me.”   There is that grey area, and the complexity of a mother and daughter relationship.  That whole dimension of playing Tea is really exciting.

MICHAEL:

Sweet Dani, now I am every concerned! (Laughs) When One Life starts out she has a drug problem, and we see a sexier version of the character.  Kelley, you must have been thrilled to have this freedom as an actress?

KELLEY:

Photo Credit: Chapman Baehler

It’s juicy stuff we are diving into when we check up on Dani.  She is older.  She is 21 when we catch up with her, and so you can see where that can go.  There is Shelter, the new club in Llanview that is focal point.  This has been so much fun playing all of these things that I never had the opportunity to do at the old One Life to Live.  It’s challenging and really hard, but that’s what I like about it!

MICHAEL:

From all appearances, it looks like Dani is front and center when One Life kicks off, and much will revolve around her!

KELLEY:

You know, it’s kind of funny.  On the old One Life to Live, when you saw Dani last time, there was all this stuff going on around her.  She was kind of getting bounced around between all this mayhem within her family, and her boyfriend.  She was just so lost.  She is still lost, but she is acting out a lot more!  You see the internal struggle that she has, instead of her just staying quiet and trying to put on a good face and pretending like things are normal.  She is not pretending anymore.  It’s really interesting to watch her go off into some rather dangerous situations.

MICHAEL:

So Florencia, I heard in a promo clip you said the word, “F**k” as Tea.  Were you the first actress that got to throw a swear word on camera?

FLORENCIA:

Photo Credit: Sue Coflin/Max Photos

All the other actors are so much more respectful than I am saying, “I still don’t think this is a good idea to do this.”  And I go, “Absolutely!”  But then the first chance I get to say, “F**k,” I was saying it left and right! (Laughs)  Tea takes over and I have to really hold myself back. (Laughs) You know, she gets very upset! (Laughs)

MICHAEL:

Tea would be uttering expletives all the time, knowing her as all the viewers do!

FLORENCIA:

Exactly! They have had to tell me, “Don’t say that!  We have had a couple of others in the episode!”  I think actually it’s a good idea that we are able to swear a bit as the characters on the show.  I think we have to be careful about it.   But it’s fun to have some new parameters, in which we can play that are a little less strict, and hopefully we will make the most of them!

MICHAEL:

Kelley, can you address the fans that are concerned that the stuff that Dani goes through is born out of the story, and not just thrown in for shock value?  And where there is swearing, and sex, it is bound to the story? 

KELLEY:

Photo Credit: Sue Coflin/Max Studios

I have said this before, it’s not exemplifying it … it’s storytelling.  I personally feel all the things that you see her go through are an important part to her story.  It’s really relatable stuff that goes on and very modern.  I think that it is a part of the story that needs to be told for her.  I don’t think they are just putting it in there for shock value, or to get press, or anything.  It’s an important part of her story.

MICHAEL:

Will Tea’s loss of her little baby boy, as she was devastated to find out in episodes of General Hospital, carry over onto the new One Life?  Will she be dealing with the fallout from all of the loss in her life?

FLORENCIA:

It’s funny, what you just asked Kelley and what you just asked me.  Those two questions are very intertwined.  It was a real concern of mine, and I think of a lot of ours, that with this new reboot that it not just be, “OOH!  We want to catch people’s attention! And oh, we are going to take our clothes off and swear and try to be the hot new thing!”  We worked really hard to anchor everything that happens story wise in our history.  To make it make sense within the projectary of what we’ve been playing for many years.  The writers, God bless them, are doing their best, but they are just coming on board now.  So, it’s our job, as well as it should be to say, “OK, Dani OD’d.  Why might she have done that?”  Kelley and I worked hard to figure it out.  I think Tea was really done being a mother after what happened with her son dying.  I think that was such a shock, and such a deep, deep source of grief that she started to really ignore Dani and push her away.  We played that, and sort of sketched that into some of the scenes.  Then Kelley and I really tried to flesh out this whole element of Dani desperately needing her mother, and wanting her mother, and Tea not being there for her.  So the drug problem came out of that.  Dani is not a loose cannon for no reason.  She is reacting to something that is real.  Then Tea starts to go, “Oh, my God. I have been living in this complete haze for the past year!  My daughter needs me.”  And that is where the guilt, the anger, the rage, the burden of being a mother is, and going: “It’s not always unconditional love for your kid.”  Sometimes it’s, “I don’t want to want to feel this way about another human being because it’s just too painful.”  The long answer is: I really hope we have done our job.  It makes the story seem like it has deep roots and ramifications.

KELLEY:

Courtesy/ABC

Amen!  And to add to that, Dani grew up with her father in Tahiti on the old One Life to Live.  It’s almost as if Dani had been fighting her whole life to have a mother.  Now she is fighting with herself.  I think a lot of times in these situations the child blames themselves, or they look toward themselves for problems like, “What is wrong with me? Why don’t my parents want me?”  So, I definitely think we tried to play that, and it’s so easy to play that when I am working with Florencia.  Tea and Dani have has their ups and downs, and had their fights, but this is definitely something different and very emotional.

MICHAEL:

Did the two of you get to share many scenes with Roger Howarth during the time he was filming at One Life as Todd?

KELLEY:

I shared a lot of scenes with Roger!

FLORENCIA:

Photo Credit: TOLN

Oh yes!  He is in there big time with us!  Roger is just endlessly hilarious and surprising. All you have to do is look into his eyes and there is so much to play off of.

KELLEY:

He is very honest in everything he does, which is so awesome to play off of!  Honestly, I couldn’t believe he came back!  I was so excited and so surprised!  I worked with him before, and I was excited to work with him again.  It was fun, the scenes we did!

MICHAEL:

But Dani has major father issues too, because of Victor Jr., Ross, and Todd!

KELLEY:

Yeah I guess, but it has almost come to a point with Dani, where she just gives up on a lot of things, including herself.  She used to be so shocked at all of the things that used to happen to her, and with all of her “daddy” issues.  She was always so shocked.  But now, it’s like a really sad acceptance you see in her of: “This is my life.  Shit happens to me. I have awful parents.”  So you kind of see that, and Dani and Todd’s relationship gets really interesting, and not even in a dark way.  But it’s all very confused and weird between them.  They say one thing to one another, but it usually means something completely different!

MICHAEL:

Courtesy/ABC

Kelley, you have a new Matthew Buchanan to play off of!  First there was the wonderful Eddie Alderson, who is not back with the show, but now we have an older Matthew played by Robert Gorrie.  Has it been an adjustment for you?  How is working with Robert?

KELLEY:

Oh, I love Eddie Alderson with all my heart.  I want to marry him some day!  And he knows it! (Laughs) When I heard he wasn’t coming back, I was sad.  He is out in Los Angeles building a life, and I am happy for him.  But meeting the new Matthew, played by Robert Gorrie, we have great chemistry.  We love working together, which is good. You see a lot of Dani and Matthew scenes right from the start, and they play off each other a lot.

MICHAEL:

Florencia, I have always told you, I think you are one of the most phenomenal actresses ever in this medium.  Can we tell your fans that you will definitely figure heavily into story?  Please tell me Tea is still a lawyer and not a cocktail waitress? (Laughs)

FLORENCIA:

Photo Credit: TOLN

Tea is still a lawyer, never fear!  If you need anyone to defend you, she is there. (Laughs) Yes, there is a lot of material for Tea to flail about, and rage at the Gods, and breakdown in tears, and throw things around a hotel room!  There is a lot for her to do.  But I think what Kelley is talking about in terms of the children and the generation of young people on One Life, sort of saying to the parents and to our generation, “You guys are telling us one thing, but the way you lead by example is a whole other story.”  That conflict of: “We want our kids to be one way, but we are not being very good examples of that.”  That is a very interesting conflict, and the new incarnation of this show is really mining that for all it’s worth!  It’s sort of an old age conflict.  The younger generation saying, “You guys have screwed things up for us and you have lied to us!  And now you are reaping what you sew!”   That struggle is … that we can no longer control our children, and we have messed up their lives.  What are we going to do about that now?  That has been a lot of fun to play.

MICHAEL:

What have the fans said to both of you during the time you have been off-screen? Were they reaching out to you on the street, or via social media?

KELLEY:

Photo Credit: Sue Coflin/Max Photos

I connect to my fans a lot through Twitter.  I just figured when One Life went off the air that everything there would drop.  I did not expect anything from the fans.  I did not expect them to follow me and they have!  It has been a really touching thing.  I am grateful for them.  They remind me of all the work I had done, and it keeps you very humble for people reaching out to you all the time with love, respect, and support.  The fan base has been amazing!  I could not be more grateful to them.  And, it is also fun to hear their insight on what they want Dani to do!

MICHAEL:

Kelley, are you at all concerned with what the fans might say when they see what happens to Dani on all-new episodes of One Life?  Be honest! (Laughs)

KELLEY:

You know, I am!  It’s not my job to worry about the writing, or where the story is going. It’s my job to be Dani.  I have tried my best to put my all into that, and to really do good work.  But the fans are always in the back of my head, and I am always thinking about how they are going to react.  I do think that they have to realize that it is not going to be the old One Life to Live.  It’s going to be different.  But I think if they give it a chance, they are really going to be pleasantly surprised.  I hope they are going to love it. 

MICHAEL:

Florencia, you have ardent fans, and also the TNT brigade of fans who loved Tea and Victor Jr. (He was then Todd thus the “TNT”).  Have you been in touch with them?  What do you think of their unwavering support?

KELLEY:

I did a reading of a play a few weeks ago and my fans were there. And all the time I was off of One Life I would post stuff on my Facebook page.  I don’t do Twitter.  But I am amazed at how smart, sweet, and supportive they are.  I didn’t know who those fans were till I started being on a soap.  Then I heard and saw how committed they are, in a way that I don’t think fans of other mediums are committed in quite the same way.  Like Kelley said, it’s a blessing and an amazing thing.  It’s because of them that we are back and that we have jobs!

MICHAEL:

Photo Credit: Sue Coflin/Max Photos

At the end of ABC’s finale cliffhanger of One Life to Live, viewers learned that Victor Jr. was very much alive!  How do you think Tea would react to that … if Tea were to see the love of her life, Victor, again?  Would you like to have the opportunity to play that out?

FLORENCIA:

Yes, of course!  Tea has always had in her heart and mind that she is going to be reunited with the love of her life.  How she thinks that is, when she saw him being zipped into a body bag, is not really a rational sensibility.  It’s something in her that can’t let go of … the dream of Victor Jr. being alive.  So, she holds that in her imagination and in her minds eye with real tenacity.  And, she would love to see him, of course.  She would love to see that for her daughter’s sake as well, not just for her own, but also for her whole family.