The Globe & Mail Broadcast Week Magazines
March 3, 1984
Capitol Series Suits Hickland Just Fine

Ironically, by procrastinating about getting into the entertainment industry, Catherine Hickland found herself in it much sooner than she had expected. The new co-star of the daytime series Capitol says she always knew she wanted an acting career, but instead followed community college with a job as a flight attendant for National Airlines. Six months later, the airline held an employees' audition, seeking a spokesman for their new television commercial.

"I hadn't wanted to audition because I knew there would be hundreds of people trying," Hickland says. "I'd never done anything like that before, but my supervisor really pushed me." Hickland got the assignment, and was soon seen by millions on national television as National's "Fly Me" girl. Then there was no holding her back.

"I joined the Screen Actors Guild right away, quit my job and moved to Los Angeles to be a star of commercials," she says, "and I have never made another commercial since." Instead she did a pilot in Nashville called Hee Haw Honeys (spun off from Hee Haw), and when that wasn't sold returned to Los Angeles to begin guest-starring on series, among them Eight is Enough, Vega$ and ChiPs, and then movies of the week.

While co-starring in the feature The Last Married Couple in America, with Natalie Wood and George Segal, she was seen by the producer of the daytime serial Texas, who added her to the cast of the New York-shot show. Then it was back to Los Angeles, where she now lives.

The lack of success in commercials came as a bit of a surprise, especially in view of her quick success with serials. "I guess I just don't have that false sense of energy," Hickland says. "What they (commercials) want is, 'Hi! Da! Da! Da!' I can do it, but I don't like to do it and I think that comes across."

That sort of bubbly effervescence, however, is perhaps the last emotion the Washington-behind-closed-doors serial wants from its newest cast addition. Her character, Julie Clegg McCandless, who married against her family's wishes, is in a situation Hickland describes as "sort of Romeo and Juliet for the eighties." In good serial tradition there are further complications.

"My husband is running for Congress and I'm not crazy about it--I don't like all the clawing and scratching," especially when his opponent is her brother. "And to make matters worse, my brother is engaged to my worst enemy. So it's really a dirty little web," Hickland says.

Her character is being featured in the series now, and the pressure is on, says Hickland, who admits that the schedule has been pretty light on her previously. "If your storyline is hot you're working every day and have a lot to learn and remember. It's a big responsibility. But in general (a daily serial) is a really nice job because your storyline isn't hot every week, and you get a break."

That suits Hickland just fine. She has just moved house--including two parrots, two cats and a dog--and is set to marry actor David Hasselhoff (star of Knight Rider) at any time, "depending on what days we have off."

Last fall she took a week off to guest star in an episode of Knight Rider. It was her second, and a reprisal of a character she created in an episode of the series she wrote last season. "The pilot had just been shot, and I thought that David's character (who had been given a new face and identity in the pilot) should have a past life." So she wrote one (she credits her fiancee with getting the producer's attention for it) in which he re-encountered his former fiancee but couldn't let her know his true identity.

She didn't write the sequel episode, but she felt the creator's pains when shooting it. "I knew exactly what I wanted" with the first, she comments, "and I told the director. At the end of the shooting he told me he only let me get away with it because I was David's girlfriend."

"I have idea's for Capitol too," Hickland says. "Even though I love the show, I want to make it better. But I don't have the nerve to tell the producer. Maybe someday I will."