Michael Logan has the scoop for TV Guide Magazine.
AMC head writer Chuck Pratt blames the mess on Riegel’s exit for pilot season. “I was led to believe we had her for longer than we really did — suddenly I got word that Eden is leaving now,” he says. Meanwhile, Braun had agreed to a six-month stay, so that left her neurotic, sexually confused character dangling in the wind.
“We got to play everything we wanted to with Bianca and Reese but not in the time we’d hoped for — in my mind, it was a two-year story,” Pratt continues. “I guess I could have rushed to the wedding earlier so that they’d have had more time together as a married couple and then had them break up, but I think the fans would have been even more unsatisfied with that.”
What if Braun had been willing to stick with AMC? “We discussed that possibility,” Pratt notes. “But if Tamara decided to stay, keeping her on the show as an angry lesbian — with no other lesbian characters on the canvas — would be kind of insane. So we thought about making Reese bisexual — kind of an Anne Heche who bounces back and forth — and maybe make her an opportunistic black widow, a real bad girl. And Tamara would have been really great at that. But, ultimately, we decided to stick with the message.”
TVGuideMagazine.com
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