Felicia Gallant
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Felicia Gallant (full name Fanny Grady St. George Lindquist Blake Castigliano Radzinsky) is a fictional character on the NBC soap opera Another World. The character is a professional romance novelist who lives in Bay City.
The character was modeled after real-life romance novelist Jacqueline Susann. Head-writer Robert Soderbergh had been friends with Susann before her death in the 1970's and regularly spoke at length with Linda Dano about Susann's passion for living.
Felicia was played by Linda Dano from 1982 until the show's cancellation in 1999. Dano won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance in 1993.
[edit] History
While playing the role Dano wrote romance novels that were published under her character's name. Felicia had affairs with the characters Cass Winthrop and Carl Hutchins, and eventually married Louis St. George, Zane Lindquist, Mitch Blake, and Lucas Castigliano; Lucas was, out of all the men she married, the true love of her life. When Lucas came to town, he came looking for the daughter he knew was alive, but she thought was stillborn (Felicia and Lucas had been lovers when they were teenagers). By extension, he revealed that she was born Fanny Grady and from a tempestuous family background. Since Felicia had taken a long time to build up this wealthy and glamorous reputation, it embarrassed her horribly to have other people know her business.
Over time, her marriage to Mitch hit a rough patch, and both cheated on the other. They asked for a mutual, amicable divorce. With Lucas back in her life, she fell for him all over again, and they were married. However, Lucas was shot by a jealous ex-lover and died in hospital weeks later, leaving Felicia heartbroken.
However, by this time, Felicia had found her daughter, the nasty vixen Lorna Devon (first played by Alicia Coppola). Felicia and Lorna were adversaries for a very long time, but eventually warmed to a mother-daughter relationship. Lorna also interacted well with Felicia's adopted daughter, Jenna, but not always; one memorable stunt involved Lorna replacing Jenna's boyfriend's music video with a never-before-seen porn tape with Jenna as the centerpiece, mere seconds before it was to air live on Felicia's talk show.
A later romantic interest for Felicia was John Hudson, as he was having troubles with his marriage to wife Sharlene. Her final marriage was to Sergei Radzinsky, whom she married to keep him in the country; he was receiving treatments for aplastic anemia as a result of exposure to Chernobyl.
[edit] Trivia
Actress Anna Stuart auditioned for this part but lost the role to Dano. Producers were so impressed by her audition that they created for her the role of Donna Love.
Linda Dano and Robin Christopher who played mother and daughter on Another World played a similar relationship on another soap opera. After AW was cancelled Dano played Gretel "Rae" Cummings and Christopher played Skye Chandler on One Life to Live where it turned out Skye was Rae's long lost daughter. When this was revealed Skye switched shows to General Hospital where Dano made several appearances. The characters had much the same relationship as their Another World characters had in the beginning but unlike Another World, this family tension never loosened.
