TCA Press Tour: Hallmark Channel mashup

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Today is Day 1 of the Television Critics Assn. Press Tour, the semi-annual gathering of television journalists from around the country. The January tour was canceled because of the writers strike, so the question of the Screen Actors Guild negotiations are hanging over these proceedings at the Beverly Hilton.

At the day’s second session, during a mish-mash panel of actors from various Hallmark Channel movies, that question of a strike was raised because one of the panelists was Ed Asner, the union’s former president.

Would there be another strike?

‘I doubt it, I truly doubt it,’ Asner said. ‘The town has been fairly terrorized this year and actors don’t have more guts than the average person. They realize the tremendous cost. Probably, if push came to shove, most would vote against it. I myself would vote for it, but I would be in the minority as I usually am.’

Later in the panel, he also said that he and Cloris Leachman (who is not here) have a ‘great lust for each other’ but they have never consummated it.

At that point, Daphne Zuniga, who was also on the stage because of the forthcoming Hallmark Channel movie ‘Mail Order Bride,’ lost it, and had a laughing attack.

Earlier in the discussion, Chandra West, who is playing the female lead in a movie called ‘For the Love of Grace,’ fielded questions about her old job on the unfathomable ‘John From Cincinnati.’

Did she understand what was going on as she acted in the late HBO show?

‘No,’ she said simply, after trying to explain a few things and failing.

Also, Florence Henderson (‘Ladies of the House’) said that she didn’t like that her television son Christopher Knight has been engaging in reality antics. When he was on ‘The Surreal Life,’ she said, he called her because ‘they’ -- VH1? The show’s producers? -- were trying to force him to propose to Adrianne Curry, whom he had met on the show. She advised him not to do that.

‘As you know, they didn’t take my advice at all,’ Henderson said.

The actress said she is a certified hypnotherapist, and in that role Knight had asked whether she would counsel the marriage. She said no, but that she ‘would counsel the divorce.’

-- Kate Aurthur