- Welcome back to another segment
of Behind the Scenes of The Waltons.
Today, I'm taking more of your questions
in a segment of Ask Judy.
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Before I start with your questions, I just want
to thank everyone for all of the birthday wishes
you sent my way in these past few days,
I really appreciate that.
Birthdays are an interesting thing,
especially as we go through different periods of our life.
When I was young, each birthday meant that I was closer
to some milestone like, "Oh, I'll turn 16
and I'll be able to drive,"
or "I'll turn 18 and I'll be legal,"
or "I'll turn 21 and I can have a drink."
Things like that.
I've never been one who has been very big on parties
or big celebrations of my birthday.
I tend to just do simple things.
Some of the birthdays that stand out to me,
when I was 13, when I turned 13,
I was working with a theater company as a child,
and for my 13th birthday, I had an opportunity
to go have a sleep over with some of my best friends.
And I wanted to do that for my birthday,
but we were supposed to have a rehearsal.
And my mom said, "Oh no, you must go.
You made a commitment."
And so I was like, "Okay, all right,
I'll go do the rehearsal."
And when I walked into the rehearsal,
they had a surprise party that they had put together for me
which was very sweet.
And the only surprise party I've ever had,
but it meant a lot to me.
And they sang to me, and they had a cake,
and it had the two candles, a one and a three for 13.
So I kept those candles for a long time.
I think I finally got rid of them during some move.
But that birthday stands out to me.
And then anytime I'm working on a special occasion,
nowadays that's one of my favorite things.
So those were fun, the times when I was working.
Or a couple of years ago, two-three years ago,
I shared a really nice birthday with my castmate, Eric,
who played Ben.
He and his wife, and another mutual friend of ours.
We went to have dinner, and then we went to the theater,
and we saw a production of "Hello, Dolly"
which was fun for me also because not only did I get
to share this evening with friends, my husband,
and our friends, but I got to see a show
that I'm very familiar with.
I've done "Hello, Dolly" a number of times,
so to see another production of it was enjoyable for me.
So those are some of my little birthday stories.
On The Waltons, they would always have a cake
for cast members on their birthday,
and the whole crew would sing happy birthday.
Because Jon Walmsley and I are about a week apart
on our birthdays, they would frequently do sort
of a joint cake, a joint party for us.
And usually it was either right after lunch
or right before lunch.
Anyway, whenever it was, when we came in,
typically in the kitchen, they would have this cake
and everybody would sing happy birthday to us.
And then we start to cut the cake and then we'd go
on working and the cake would be then available
for everybody to go over and have a piece later.
I remember sometimes feeling like I wanted
to have my own birthday, I didn't always want to have
to share it with Jon.
But I adore Jon, and it was nice
to be recognized regardless of whether it was
just individually or sharing it with Jon.
And now onto your questions.
This one from Steven, he said,
did you ever mess up on those scenes,
and what would you do?
So, yes, we did mess up.
Pretty regularly something would happen.
Somebody would fumble a line or they miss a mark,
so we weren't correctly in camera frame,
or we missed our light, or we were blocked by something,
or a prop didn't quite go the way we wanted it to.
So we would just go back to the beginning and do it again.
Sometimes if it was a longer scene,
they would do what we call a pickup.
So let's say they got through a complicated section
at the beginning that involved some camera move,
and everybody landed correctly.
And then several lines in, or towards the end,
somebody messed up something,
or the camera kind of missed a move.
Then we'd cut, and we'd do a pickup.
So we would just go back and we would start
from a line or two before wherever the point was
that we messed up.
And we would just do that section of the scene
until the end of the scene.
And then knowing that in editing,
because they were gonna be cutting around,
it didn't really matter if they used the first part
of the scene take, or whether they used the pickup part.
If it was an all-in-one shot,
then of course we couldn't do a pickup
because they needed it to be all continuously
in one good take.
So we would do the same thing with closeups too,
or various other two shots or things like that,
that if you hit a particular point
where there was a mess up, we just stop,
and sometimes we just do a pickup depending
on how long the scene was, or we do the whole thing again.
Or if you fumbled something, but you finished the scene,
then they might say, "Well, let's just pick up
that one line."
So those types of things went on.
The biggest thing with TV is we have
to keep moving at a pretty good pace.
So there isn't the luxury of really "Let's do 20 takes"
or "Let's try it a little bit differently."
We had to snap along.
So typically we only did two or three takes.
If we got it in the first one, might be like,
okay, great, moving on.
So I hope that helps answer your question.
This question from Devitkak100,
sorry if I mispronounced that.
Hi, Judy, I'm not as familiar with the acting profession,
so forgive my naivete.
No problem.
Before each episode, did actors read
through the entire script to understand the feel
of the story?
Yes.
I mean, I always read through an entire script.
I wanted to know the whole story, that was important to me.
And I think most actors do do that.
Sometimes if I was going into someone else's show
where I just had sort of what I would call
a functional character, like I was a doctor, or a coroner,
or something like that, that just had like one scene,
and I knew exactly what the scene was about.
I might more skim the rest of the script
because it wasn't going to impact my scene.
But that was very, very rare for me,
and it was usually if it was just a really quick turnaround.
One time I was hired the night before,
shooting the next morning, and my priority was
to make sure I knew my scenes
rather than worry about reading the entire script
and taking what few hours I had to prepare
to read the whole script.
Because again, it didn't impact what I was doing
in my scene.
But for The Waltons, yes, I always read the entire script.
Then continues on.
Since scenes are taped by location rather than scene,
I assume an entire read-through was desired.
Absolutely.
For scenes where you had just a few lines,
did you still read through the script
or did you simply come in, say your lines, be done with it?
Covered that.
Are there any episodes where you did not know the full depth
of the story, but found out when you watched the show?
Well, I would say no, not really.
But it was always fun for me when I watched episodes
to see scenes that I wasn't in
to see what the actors brought to those scenes.
Or even the scenes that I was in sometimes
to see how they played within the entire episode.
So it was always interesting to me,
always still is interesting to me
to see how something transfers from just what you read
on the page to the final product,
and what the director's choices were with the camera,
and how they chose to edit it together,
and all those kinds of things.
I just love the whole filmmaking process.
It's always interesting to me.
And even when I watch episodes of our show now,
all these years later, I frequently am like,
I don't remember how they shot that.
Oh, wow, in The Ferris Wheel
where Elizabeth is like floating through the air and things.
How did they do that?
Or somebody fell off something.
Wow, I'm guessing that was a stunt.
So it's still fun for me, it's still magic to me.
So thank you for asking.
A question here from Bippie102,
Hey, Bibbie.
(Judy laughing)
I would love to have you do a video
on Battle of the Network Stars and what that was like.
Did you practice as a team beforehand?
Was it as competitive as it looked?
What was it like playing football with Tom Selleck?
And did you stay in touch with any of these people?
I loved doing Battle of the Network Stars.
I'm really competitive.
So although I've never been a professional athlete
in any way, I've participated in a lot of sorts
of sports and always loved them.
So for me doing Battle of the Network Stars,
it was fun and it was competitive.
We did not practice as a team in advance,
but I would try to practice some of the things
that I knew I might be doing, if I could, like maybe try
to get in a pool and do some swimming.
Or certainly the football, I would take a football to work
and have all the crew members toss me a football
so I could practice catching.
So things like that.
And then, yes, it was very competitive.
A lot of times - it was shot over two days
at Pepperdine University that overlooked Malibu beaches.
And the first day, usually everyone was like,
"Oh, this is so fun, we're gonna have fun."
And very quickly into it everyone got very competitive.
Particularly the guys, not to say that a lot
of the women weren't really competitive too
'cause they were.
But it got to be like really in there.
Hey, we cared.
And people wanted to do their best, and there were injuries.
I broke a finger during football one time.
I did three of the Battles.
I sprained an ankle on the obstacle course.
So, there were definitely those aspects of it.
So I think people did get pretty competitive.
And then playing football with Tom Selleck.
Tom, I love Tom.
He was so great to work with.
He was our team captain on one of the Battles that I did,
and a good football player, really good athlete.
And he was really kind to me
and just, yeah, great team member.
So he was very good as a quarterback, and knew how
to throw the ball so that I could track it,
I could catch it.
He didn't overthrow it, he didn't like bomb it
in there where it would have been.
I would have had to do something like,
"Ah, wow, here it comes really fast."
Nope, no bullets in there.
He did that.
He might've thrown a little harder
with the guys, don't know, but that was a lot of fun.
And I think my favorite Tom Selleck story was
when I did the Battle with him where I sprained my ankle
in the obstacle course, I sprained it going
through - over the wall.
I landed awkwardly into the airbag on the other side.
And as I stepped out, I kind of rolled the ankle.
And so I had to go through the water thing,
which I kind of almost ran through because my ankle hurt.
And I finished and I won my heat,
but then I just sort of laid down, and the pain was sort
of hitting me on that.
And Howard Cosell was trying to interview me.
And someone's like, "Leave her alone, she's injured."
And then I was carried off the field. And it wasn't
until I literally watched the episode when it aired
that I realized that it was Tom Selleck
who carried me off the football field.
And I thought, oh shoot, I was in so much pain
that I didn't even get to enjoy this moment
of Tom Selleck carrying me off the football field.
So those are some of my fun memories of doing the battle.
And maybe I'll expand on one in a segment about more
of that at some point.
In terms of staying in touch with those people.
Some of them I already knew, and some,
yes I still cross paths with at times.
Gregory Harrison, who I did all three of my Battles with,
he's super competitive, super athletic,
really great athlete.
And he and I have kind of kept in touch a bit
over the years.
Randi Oakes, who ultimately married Greg Harrison,
and they, I think, met doing Battle.
She and I, a number of years later ended up
doing Circus of the Stars together
when we did flying trapeze.
So I got to know her a bit better as well.
So those are some of my Battle memories.
That's what I have for you for this segment
of Behind the Scenes of The Waltons, Ask Judy,
my birthday edition.
Thank you so much for being here.
I will see you next time on more Behind the Scenes
of The Waltons and more Ask Judy.
Thanks for watching.