Susan Lucci finds busy TV life outside of daytime
By TERRY MORROW September 5, 2012 6:56PM
Susan Lucci is finding much to do on these days on nighttime television, with roles in several series. | Todd Williamson ~ AP
If living well is truly the best revenge, Susan Lucci is getting hers in spades.
The actress who was heartbroken a year ago to see her daytime series “All My Children” end after more than 40 years is not sitting around being bored.
She’s returning to scripted-series TV with “Devious Maids,” coming in 2013 from the creator of “Desperate Housewives.” Lucci also has been busy on the series “Army Wives.”
And now she’s host of the true-crime program “Deadly Affairs” (9 p.m. Saturdays, Investigation Discovery). “Affairs” chronicles the tragedies when love triangles and quadrangles occur. In this series, two is company — three is murder.
“It’s a series about how love affairs can go as wrong as they can possibly go,” Lucci says.
“But when it was pitched to me, it was so well-written. It even made me laugh. I knew I wanted to be involved.”
Lucci won’t act in the series. She’s introducing the story and wrapping up the loose ends.
During the meeting about hosting the show, the executives wooing her displayed pictures of Lucci as her “All My Children” character, Erica Kane, her myriad of lovers and husbands. There was also a shot of Erica in prison.
Though she played Erica through all the character’s soap-filled trauma for decades, she never really pondered how love affairs get to such a violent breaking point until now.
“I hear such news on the news night after night, and I think, ‘What is going on?’ I wonder why these women and men just don’t get a divorce,” she says.
“It takes my breath away to see how many times someone is killed or their bodies are found in the water, drifting around until someone finds them.”
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