Lunch With The Cramer Women - Laura Bonarrigo

We Love Soaps had the opportunity to sit down with the fabulous talents who portray the Cramer Women of Llanview.  Starting February 12, 2010, this complicated and tortured family will be reuniting on ONE LIFE TO LIVE, and we could not be happier! What follows will be a series of articles and features about these courageous women and their legacy on daytime. 

We Love Soaps: As a therapist I am fascinated by the Cramer women's family history, and how Cassie has struggled with mental illness and various times.  I remember one of her first breakdowns after the loss of unborn child in 1993.
Laura Bonarrigo: That was a big incident.  Exhausting. 

We Love Soaps: What has it been like for you to come and go as Cassie?
Laura Bonarrigo: It’s a privilege.  I am the fourth actress to play Cassie, and I keep getting invited back.  So it’s nice to come back, see my friends, see my peers, catch up with what they’re doing in real life.

Lunch With The Cramer Women, Part 1

We Love Soaps was invited to attend a press lunch today with the Cramer Women of ONE LIFE TO LIVE. Robin Strasser (Dorian), Kassie DePaiva (Blair), Gina Tognoni (Kelly), Kristen Alderson (Starr), Laura Bonarrigo (Cassie), Melissa Fumero (Arianna) and Brittany Underwood (Langston) were in attendance. We'll have more from the event coming up including a special episode of WE LOVE SOAPS TV, but for now here's an excerpt from the media roundtable.

Roger Newcomb (We Love Soaps): What do you see as the biggest strength of the show? If people aren’t watching, why should they watch?
Gina Tognoni: Because Snoop Dogg is on! Seriously, we have great entertainment.
Robin Strasser: It’s very edgy. It’s unpredictable. There is an electric unpredictability and surprise factor on a daily basis. I think that’s cool. The cast is not vanilla or homogenzied. You distinctly know when you’ve landed in Llanview. You’re not confused is it that show or that show? I think our people do look atypically fabulous.
Kassie DePaiva: I think it’s because we are entertaining. We have a strong writer who has been with our show. We have an Executive Producer who has been there since he was in a diaper. We have people that have been on this journey a long time that aren’t just trying to throw stuff up and say, “Let’s do this...” They are being extremely creative but they also are honoring history. That’s what we’re doing here today with the Cramer women, we are honoring history. If you don’t know where you’ve been, you’re certainly not going to know where you’re going. And this is where we have been. We have a great journey to go with these women who will hopefully arrive at a special place and you’ll be entertained along the way.
Melissa Fumero: It’s not overly dramatic a lot of the time, it’s funny a lot of the time. Even with Snoop Dog and music artists, the music we do, and when characters sing. I think that’s what is so great about ONE LIFE TO LIVE, they switch it up a lot. It’s not just death and drama.
Kassie DePaiva: We do crazy fantasy stuff. We do things outside of what is typically soap opera.
Melissa Fumero: There is a little bit of everything.
Gina Tognoni: Yet it sticks to that good formula. It knows what it is.
Kassie DePaiva: But it’s also not afraid to make fun of itself to a certain extent. Like doing “Grey Gardens.” I love it. It’s cutting edge.