- Welcome to another segment
of behind the scenes of The Waltons.
Ask Judy.
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Edna asks, "How was it accepting newcomers
to the Walton family for everyone
when there was such a tight bond between the cast,
especially like Cindy, Pearl, Serena and Jeffrey characters
that came into the house?"
I'm not sure who Pearl was.
I don't know if you're referring to Rose.
But,
we had such great casting people
that the actors who came in to join the show
always sort of fit.
Leslie in particular, playing Cindy was just a gem.
She became not just someone we loved having on set,
but someone that we very much embraced
in our personal lives as well.
And she still is someone that we see regularly
and that I am in regular contact with.
So she was very easy to kind of come into the show.
Same thing with Keith Coogan,
who played Jeffrey and Martha Nix who played Serena.
I have seen them subsequently at various Walton reunions
and so have stayed in touch with over the years.
I know, as a cast, we tried really hard
to make people feel welcome when they came on to our set
and worked with us.
We wanted them to feel relaxed,
and we wanted it to be a pleasant experience for them.
That was just kind of the way our cast was
and the way our set was.
So we were always very accepting and tried
to make it comfortable for guest stars.
Sometimes you just gel with some people more than others.
So,
I would say that that happened
where there were some people I worked with for some time,
but perhaps didn't
have a reason or an opportunity
to socialize with away from the work.
But all of our recurring characters,
we were all pretty close.
Melissa asks,
"Did you have much time off during the series?
How many days did you work each week?
Shows on TV today don't have that many episodes anymore."
That's very true.
We worked about nine months out of the year,
'cause we did 22 to 26 episodes per season,
which is like, never happens anymore.
And we were an hour long episode.
So we took six and a half days to film,
we did have Saturdays and Sundays off.
We would start filming for the season usually around May.
And we would take
we would take holidays,
some holidays off,
not all like we would take Thanksgiving off,
we would usually have about a week
at Christmas sometimes two.
And sometimes it was one other point in the year
when we had maybe a week long break.
But mostly it was nine months out of the year,
we'd wrap up sometime in maybe February or so.
And then for those of us in school,
we'd go back to public school for that three months.
So it wasn't really like we had time off.
(laughs)
We were back to public school and under the pressure
then of getting caught up back with our own personal school.
And for me,
having to just
hit the books
and they weren't always doing the same thing
I had been doing at the studios.
So I had to get caught up and figure it all out
and keep my grades up so that I could continue
to have a work permit to work.
During episodes, if you had a very light storyline,
then you might have days off.
While we were in school,
we still had to show up
and do schoolwork during the week.
But otherwise, if you were done,
then you might get half a day off to do whatever.
Once we were finished with school then if I had a day off,
I had a day off.
But you were always sort of on call.
Because if something had to change with the schedule,
then they might suddenly say, "Oh, we need you tomorrow."
So you could tentatively make plans,
but you had to be ready to change them at any moment
because we were under contract and our first obligation
was to be available when they needed us at work.
Natalie asks,
"I enjoyed the episode
where you were working as a county nurse.
I wound up becoming a public health nurse myself city style,
but dreamed about how cool it would be
to work in a rural area.
I'd like to hear your thoughts about playing a nurse."
Well, good for you Natalie.
I think
what you and all the other health workers do is so amazing,
and so very, very valuable.
I was perfectly happy to play a nurse
and then play doctor on TV.
And I've done that on on other shows as well.
I found it much easier to do on TV
than I would have found it in real life.
I so admire what those of you do
to really care for people.
I feel like by comparison,
what actors do is a little more frivolous
that we just try to lighten people's moods
and entertain them and put a smile on their face
and maybe bring a laugh here and there
and a tear here and there
all in
the sense of telling a story.
So I really enjoyed though playing Mary Ellen,
particularly when she was a nurse
and riding up into the backwoods
and taking care of people.
So I really enjoyed those storylines
and I felt that what my character was doing
was very valuable.
So that felt good.
Sandra asks,
"I would like to know, what would you have done in life
had you not been an actress,
and in real life now a singer, and why?"
Interesting.
I started acting so young.
I was about, oh, gosh, maybe four or five
when I started doing little musical recitals,
and then did theater and then did TV
and then did commercials.
And then when the series ended,
I went back and started doing musical theater
and then got into writing and directing.
So when I was younger,
because I was pretty much focused on acting...
there were moments I got into riding horses
and jumping horses, which I loved,
and no one else in my family at that time
was involved in horses at all,
I actually got interested
because of a costumer that I worked with on The Waltons,
who took me to a horse show,
and took me out to see her horse
and I said, I wanna do that.
So at 15, I started riding.
So there were points when I thought,
oh, gosh, if I weren't an actor,
I'd want to train horses
or be somehow involved in working with horses.
So that was something early on that I was aware of.
And then later on, I would I would think about it,
but I always felt like I wanted
to stay in the creative field.
So that's why I got into writing and directing and singing
and things like that too - behind the scenes
work in theater and stuff
because basically, I'm an artist at heart.
J.E.S
asked,
"Did you ever watched The Waltons,
while it was originally on the air?
Or did you avoid watching it as you were on it,
and at the time didn't wanna watch what you just finished?"
I usually watched on Thursday nights I mean,
when The Waltons first started in 1972,
when we started airing,
there weren't recorders.
We didn't have recording devices.
So if I didn't watch the show on Thursday night
at eight o'clock when it was on, I didn't see it.
Maybe I could catch it when it was in reruns in the summer.
But some episodes I never saw
because I wasn't available at that point in time
to watch it.
But I did try to catch it,
particularly if it was an episode
that I had
a prominent
storyline in.
Sometimes if it was something that I'd had almost nothing
to do with, I might skip it.
So there honestly, may be some episodes I never saw.
The other interesting thing is that
people ask me about episodes,
and about working with certain people.
If I wasn't working that day,
I may not have ever met that Guest Actor.
So because we were filmed rather than taped live
in front of an audience.
If you weren't in a scene,
a lot of times I just plain wasn't there.
So there were people I never got to interact with.
And storylines, that once I'd read the script
I just wasn't around for any of the filming.
So it's always kind of fun for me
now when I'm doing these videos
to look back and watch episodes
that I either haven't seen for years
or may not have ever seen.
So I become just a - just an audience like you,
but with a lot more inside information.
I don't like watching myself ever with other people.
So if I'm watching my work,
I tend to want to watch it alone.
It's just to this day,
not easy for me to sit and watch myself.
So I get self conscious if there are other people around
(laughs)
or if the lights are on
or if people are talking or commenting.
So that's just one of my quirks.
Someone had posted a comment question
asking about what some of the various
different technical positions were on the crew.
And one of our directors, Ralph Senensky, was kind enough
to post an answer to that.
So for those of you who might have a similar question,
and didn't see Ralph's answer, I'm gonna read it for you:
"I can answer that - gaffers are the lighting technicians.
They are the people who do the turning and aiming lights
according to the director and lighting head man.
Grips do the physical tasks involving the sets furniture,
if you're not a grip, don't you dare try to move a chair.
Cinematographer is the head man supervising the cameras.
His crew is his camera operator
who runs the camera during the take,
camera assistant who is with the camera operator
during the take and in charge of the focusing of the camera."
So there you go.
Those are gaffers, grips,
and electricians and camera operators and camera assistants.
Thanks for watching this segment of Ask Judy.
I'll be back with more behind the scenes
of The Waltons about episodes,
answering your questions on Ask Judy,
and I'll see you next time.
Thanks for watching.