Legendary soap opera writer Agnes Nixon changed the serial drama landscape with the creation of the beloved shows All My Children and One Life to Live. The Illinois native was also a trailblazer in the genre, pioneering some of the first stories dealing with race and LGBT issues as well as the first daytime cancer storyline (on Guiding Light). In honor of the soap opera icon, who passed away in 2016, several AMC and OLTL actors are reuniting to reminisce about their experiences working with her on her beloved shows.
OLTL alum Erika Slezak (Victoria Lord) will be joining AMC alums Peter Bergman (Cliff Warner; Jack Abbott, The Young and the Restless), Susan Lucci (Erica Kane), Debbi Morgan (Angie Hubbard), and Darnell Williams (Jesse Hubbard) on an upcoming episode of The Locher Room.
The five actors will be coming together for the live broadcast to celebrate Nixon on Wednesday, March 31, at 3PM ET. Nixon's son, Robert Nixon, will also join the broadcast, as will legendary comedy actress Carol Burnett, who is a huge fan of AMC and made several appearances on the ABC soap opera as Verla Grubbs. To listen to the special episode of The Locher Room, check out the video below when it becomes available on March 31 or click here.
Nixon got her start in the entertainment industry just days after earning her bachelor's degree, writing radio soaps under another industry icon, Irna Phillips (who created shows such as Guiding Light, Another World, and As the World Turns).
Nixon finished the bible for AMC in the mid-1960s but ABC executives passed on the program and asked for something more "contemporary." The result was OLTL, which premiered in 1968. The series was rich in social issue storylines and ethnic characters, like the first Black soap opera leads (Ellen Holly's Carla Gray and Al Freeman Jr.'s Ed Hall).
Seeing the success of OLTL, ABC decided to give the green light to AMC, which premiered in 1970 and immediately pushed the limits of daytime with storylines that centered around the anti-war movement, homosexuality, the AIDS epidemic, and television's first on-screen abortion.
"On the social issues, whether the Vietnam War or abortion or racism, I never thought I could change the way most people felt," Nixon told the Catholic magazine America in 2002. "I just wanted to show the unfairness of it, the inequality, the injustice."
In addition to AMC and OLTL, Nixon created Loving, which ran from 1983 to 1995, and she co-created The City, which ran from 1995 to 1997. She passed away in 2016 at the age of 93 from pneumonia resulting from Parkinson's disease.
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