Julia Montgomery Talks The Young and The Restless Stint and One Life to Live Co-Star Phil Carey
Julia Montgomery, who originated the role of Samantha Vernon Buchanan Garretson on One Life to Live, is set to appear on The Young and the Restless as Los Angeles real estate agent Tanya. The veteran soap star, who went on to big-screen fame in the Revenge of the Nerds movie series, spoke to Michael Fairman TV about her daytime return and working with Phil Carey (Asa Buchanan) on OLTL.
Thus far, Fairman noted, Montgomery's stint is slated to be short, though she will share scenes with newcomer Kelsey Wang (Allie). Of coming back to the genre that launched her to fame, Montgomery recalled:
Honestly, it was really fun to be back on a soap opera set. It’s so interesting with the multiple cameras, etc. It’s its own animal. At one point, I was sitting down between my scenes, and I just had this kind of a rush. I purposely have not been on a soap set for decades, and then this came about, and I was like, 'Why not?'. I’m just in a completely different place in real-life as an empty nester, plus it’s kind of hysterical that I’m also a realtor, and I’m playing an LA realtor!
On One Life to Live, Montgomery played good girl Samantha "Sam" Vernon, part of a complicated family. Samantha also mixed it up with Llanview residents like Karen (Judith Light), Marco (Gerry Anthony), Jenny (Brynn Thayer), and Dorian (Robin Strasser).
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But she became a married woman by wedding Buchanan patriarch Asa. Montgomery mused of working with Carey:
Phil was a nice guy, but he had sciatica, so as the day wore on, he would have to take medicine for that, and he’d go to lunch, and then he’d come back, and it was he wasn’t really that present. He was sort of just getting through it. Interestingly enough, somewhere during those soap opera years, I ended up being interviewed several times by Dustin Hoffman and his writer for the movie Tootsie, and they literally based that older doctor character off of me telling them about Phil Carey.
She added:
He would have a drink, come back to set, and I think he may have forgotten he had already taken his Percocet, and it’d be like, 'Is anybody home?' So, I mean, it wasn’t very fulfilling, at least for me, and so that’s ultimately why I left. The storyline was really fun, though. It was young Sam, being kind of independent, and it had that fun banter with Asa.
