The KIM LANKFORD Chat

By Art Swift

Kim Lankford now runs a successful horse business in Colorado. She also is skilled at Pilates and healing methods. But once upon a time she was original cast member Ginger Ward on “Knots Landing.” We discussed how she came to that point and reminisced about her years in Seaview Circle, married to Kenny (James Houghton). This interview took place February 7, 2005, and includes questions from members of Knots Landing Online.

Joshua Slow from Northridge, California asks:

I remember an early episode of KNOTS LANDING called "Constant Companion."  It was well-penned and dealt with the controversial subjects of abortion and Vietnam.  The subtext of this chapter is rather haunting and, like much on KNOTS LANDING, withstands the test of time. Today as well war and reproductive rights are big issues.  By contemporary standards, the storyline may be tame; but nonetheless, America's political landscape became more conservative in the '80s.  Fellow KNOTS LANDING alum Alec Baldwin is an outspoken liberal, and Lisa Hartman married country singer Clint Black who is vocal on the other side of the fence.  I'm not really asking you to take a big stand on anything here, but what is your personal reaction when you watch something like "Constant Companion" today?  Do you feel differently about it when you see it today than you did when it was first filmed? 

Kim Lankford: I have not seen it in quite some time. I saw it after we had done it. I don’t know that I’ve seen it in reruns. I remember the episode very vividly. For Ginger, for my character at that time, I think that was the right choice, besides the fact it was written that way. It was her choice because she was so young. She was 16 in the flashbacks to when she had that abortion. And though it haunted her always, I think the mother (Priscilla Pointer) was really pushing her to have this abortion but she really loved this guy, this was the love of her life. So in there, there’s the constant companion to me, the haunting of that. Then of course he was killed in the service and that left the mother without a grandchild. And the mother just speculated all this stuff but then it came out that this was really true, that Ginger was haunted with those flashbacks.

It was a really meaningful episode to me because of all that, because it dealt with those kinds of things and for Ginger even though she went ahead and had this abortion, it was her mother who made her have this. She went on to marry Kenny and have a life and a child but that was something that has haunted her all her life.

The person’s question is interesting to me because we can allow these things to be haunting or they can be embracing, and I think as the years go by you would want to be able to forgive yourself for that choice. Today it’s still an interesting controversy because we’re still talking about abortion as an issue. To me it should be a woman’s right to choose, there where I, Kim, stands. But I don’t think these things are easy decision. Even now we’re still talking about Roe v. Wade, so it remains timely. We as a society are still conflicted on how to deal with this. Now I don’t believe in abortion for birth control. That would be something I don’t understand and it’s an interesting concept of when does life start. Is it at that inception, the moment that you find yourself pregnant? Some people would say yes; is it when the fetus starts to develop and grow, no. I can see that it is something that we’ll always be talking about.

In the writer’s question, it’s an interesting dilemma. And I think it still holds up. How do I feel about it? I’m proud of the episode.

Art Swift: Now, at the time, when it was being filmed, was there a sense that you were doing something controversial, or was it a settled matter?

Kim Lankford: I think we were doing something controversial. I thought there was a lot of sensitivity on the set. If I’m not mistaken, in that episode a few people had flashbacks, but then again, maybe they didn’t. (Thinking) Maybe it was just Ginger. I know there was an episode where Laura had flashbacks. But for us, we knew we were doing things that weren’t done on television. Though there was no turmoil about it.

AS: And apart from the abortion issue, I think this was the first time – the first and only time – that the show in its 14 years mentioned Vietnam. So what was the sense about that at the time?

Kim Lankford: For me, it was really personal because I had known boys who had been to Vietnam and didn’t come back. Or my cousin had been to Vietnam but came back quite disturbed from it, then ultimately ended up killing himself. So for me it was a very important episode on many different levels. My cousin had died from Vietnam, killed himself, taken his life. I knew other boys who came back, not whole, mentally. I knew one boy who came back, minus a leg. These guys were good friends of mine so I thought it was really important and I was really proud.

As the show got more evolved, after ten years, it started to become kind of caricatured. I wish we had always continued to tackle those kinds of issues. I think it’s important to have a platform like Knots Landing. It’s entertaining but it touches on issues – like Vietnam.

AS: I thought that was pretty noble.

Kim Lankford: Yes … there were many things that I thought were noble about Knots Landing. I loved the show and that’s what I loved doing about the show, bringing issues to people that we were really tackling.

AS: What else about the show did you find noble?

Kim Lankford: The characters were all noble. The characters and how we dealt with things. It got to its soap opera stuff. It did have its soap opera where you found people cheating on people and sleeping with other people, but before Sid died … I wonder what would have happened to Knots Landing had Sid not been killed. Because he and Karen had been the Mom and Dad of the cul de sac. They had been the ones we all had looked to, especially Kenny and Ginger, because they were the young couple. So we wanted to be like Sid and Karen. You wanted to be successful and wholesome and good like that. I think in that first season Sid tried to bring a sense of dignity to the auto shop and dignity to his work. And that kind of atoned for the cul de sac. I think people wanted to be better, and that was noble. Even though Richard was an un-noble person, he was always trying

Another question from Joshua Slow:

How did you manage to land the role of Ginger Ward on KNOTS LANDING at such a very young age?  IMDB lists your birth date as June 14, 1962. If this is accurate, it means you were only about seventeen-years-old at the beginning of KL.  You did look young, mind you, but were you really THAT young?  You don't have to reveal your real age, lol; I know actors don't like to do this.  But were you actually still a teenager in the pilot?  "Constant Companion" indicated that Ginger's son would have been eight-years-old had he lived so this means Ginger was designed to be a tad older than 17.  And did you have much previous experience as an actress before KL came along? 

Kim Lankford (laughing): I love that, I love that. Yes, actors don’t like to reveal their true age. No, Ginger was not 17 nor was I 17; I was a bit older than that.

AS: Did you realize this was on the Internet Movie Database? I know you said you’re not online but on www.imdb.com it has you as that age.

Kim Lankford: Well I love it. It can stay there. It’s a little short of it, but that’s all right. One of the guys in my band said, “Kim, you’re one of the only ones who continues to get younger.” (Laughs) I say, good, just keep them guessing. So yes, I was a bit older, Ginger was not 17, Ginger was 22 but I was not 22. It doesn’t matter how old I was. I had done a series before that called “Waverly Wonders.”

AS: Oh, with Larry Hagman.

Kim Lankford: No, not Larry Hagman.

AS: Larry Hagman was supposed to do that and … I had this whole story. He was given the pilot of “Waverly Wonders” and “Dallas” and guess which one he chose?

Kim Lankford: Really? Well Joe Namath wound up doing “Waverly Wonders” and so I had done that series and I we had done 22 of those with Joe. My character was in high school and it was about a boy’s basketball team and I was the only girl on the basketball team. So I had done that show and I had done the show “Malibu Beach” before Knots Landing.

AS: OK, so you did all that, and where’d you grow up?

Kim Lankford: California.

AS: Where?

Kim Lankford: Santa Monica, La Mriada and Placentia. And I lived in the Hollywood Hills.

AS: And what about your parents? What did they do while you were growing up?

Kim Lankford: My Mom was an opera singer, so she toured around the country singing, and my Dad was personnel director for Purex Corporation at that time.

AS: Any brothers and sisters?

Kim Lankford: I have one brother and one sister. Steve and Laurie, both younger.

AS: Did you just sort of drift into acting or is it something you always wanted to do?

Kim Lankford: It’s something I always wanted to do. When I was in high school I worked at the Birdcage Theater in Knott’s Berry Farm. So I was always acting. My Grandma was a Ziegfield Follies girl and a vaudevillian. She was very flamboyant growing up. In fact, I had done this episode of “Happy Days,” right after my Grandma had died. Oh, it was so sad. My Grandma’s name was Stacey, and you know how they had all those banners around for “Happy Days?”

AS: Sure.

Kim Lankford: They had a banner for Stacey, and I thought, “Oh my God, there’s my Grandma on the set.”

Alex Wade of Ferndale, Michigan asks:

In hindsight, one of the problems with Kenny and
Ginger was that they became sort of a one trick pony.
Kenny being bad, and Ginger harping on him. Were you
aware of this at the time? Were you in any position to
change the course of your storyline?

Kim Lankford: Well … I think I was. What happened was that Jim Houghton went to the producers and he wanted off the show. I did not know that. He told me after the fact. I believe that if they had let Ginger go ahead and have her affair and maybe if I had pushed for that affair, that might have changed the course of Kenny and Ginger. I did not want to leave the show.

AS: You did not want to leave but they felt like both Kenny and Ginger had to go.

Kim Lankford: Kenny wanted to go and they just couldn’t find a way at that time to fix it for Ginger. Now, my thing with David Jacobs was, “But you’re the god, you can find a way. And it can work like this: they get divorced.” How timely is that? Kenny can do his thing and Ginger can be a struggling single Mom and what would that invite into the cul de sac? But for a time David Jacobs wanted to spin off a show of Kenny and Ginger, but Jim didn’t want to do that.

AS: Why not?

Kim Lankford: I don’t know. He wanted to write. He wrote a couple of episodes, and like I said, I found this out after he had done this and we had our words about that. He and his sister had written a couple of episodes of Knots Landing and just … Jim I don’t think ever felt the feeling that we feel as an actor that you just need to perform. You know he never did stage. I don’t think in his heart of hearts that he was a performer. So to me, that’s the underlying thing of it. I think he was more comfortable writing and expressing himself that way.

I wanted to stay on the show and David Jacobs and Michael Filerman, they knew that.

AS: And was there ever a chance that you could have returned?

Kim Lankford: Well I did. I returned for the reunion shows. But I don’t know, then Knots Landing went such a crazy way, I didn’t come back to the show. I would come back if there was another reunion. There was a great scene in the reunion when I was talking to Karen and Val where I said if I had any idea what I was missing when I was away I would have divorced Kenny long ago. (Laughs)

Another question from Alex is: Do you ever watch the reruns and laugh at how hip Kenny and Ginger were?

Kim Lankford: Yes I have. I have laughed at us. We were so hip. We were so hip we were square. I haven’t seen them in some time. But a couple years ago one of my friends was over and he found a video and put it in and I thought, yeah, look at this, we were so hip. So trendy, so cool.

Floyd Smoot asks

Were you disappointed that, as an original cast member, her character was relegated to a more supporting role as the years went by.

Kim Lankford: No, I always looked at it as we were an ensemble. I mean, obviously, you want to have the big script all the time but that’s not the way we worked nor the way we supported each other. I never thought of myself as less than everyone else.

AS: I don’t mean less than as an actress. It just seems that as time went on obviously Sid’s death allowed Karen to have a big storyline and the Abby-Val-Gary triangle took precedence, so you didn’t see any dropoff in your screen time or anything like that?

Kim Lankford: Well, sure. I was aware of the fact when I wasn’t on camera, sure I saw that. But it wasn’t until the episode before we were told we were going to be let go that I figured it all out. It was a shock to me and I’ll say I didn’t want to leave the show. I wanted to stay and saw plenty of ways to have stayed and to have been prominent in it. We were a spinoff of “Dallas” so we had to have the Ewing thing, with Abby. Could I have seen Ginger more intertwined in that? Sure, I could have.

AS: How so?

Kim Lankford: She and Abby could have gotten together and she and Abby could have been cohorts. Then Ginger would have had another dimension because she would have seen how scheming Abby was. So there are just ways if it had been written that way. But according to David Jacobs and Michael Filerman people didn’t want to see Ginger being bad.

AS: Even though there were elements in it in your last season. She started to get very jealous, jealous of Ciji, and I thought that was very well done. Kenny was spending his time with Ciji and Ginger was given short shrift so to speak.

Kim Lankford: Mmm hmmm.

AS: So obviously, Kim could have played that. If they had set the groundwork slowly, as they often did, it would have made sense to see Ginger play bad.

Kim Lankford: Of course! I could have learned so much from Abby. So much from Abby. And Laura for that matter. It could be like, look, this is what you need to do with Kenny. There could have been another dynamic that could have been really interesting.

AS: When you said you didn’t know until the episode before last, and then you “knew,” could you explain a little more about that process?

Kim Lankford: There’s just gut instincts that one gets. Jim had told me that he had asked to be off the show. By that time I knew that. And David Jacobs had us in for a meeting and said he was going to have us in to do a spinoff of Ginger and Kenny, but Jim didn’t want to do that. So there were some little subtle things like that all in the spring. And then Michael called me in for a meeting, when we were shooting an episode, the episode before my last one, which was the one where I said I was moving to Nashville to record an album. So when they called me in for that meeting I knew that was what they were going to say.

AS: How did that feel?

Kim Lankford: Terrible. Terrible. I didn’t want to leave the show. In my own life I was living with Warren Zevon and we had been breaking up, and that was the only sense of security that I had, was that show. And I don’t mean monetarily, but a place where I felt wanted. And so, when I didn’t feel wanted there, it was really devastating.

AS: Did you try to convey any of this?

Kim Lankford: Oh yeah. It took a long time for us to get that scene because I didn’t want to do it. The scene where I said I was leaving I didn’t want to. And David Jacobs was there and I told him, I don’t want to, I don’t and he said, I know. I mean, he was friendly.

AS: Do you think someone higher up than him told him not to keep you?

Kim Lankford: I don’t know. It could have been higher-ups. Maybe the network didn’t like me or like the character. What I did know is that they did not want the character to go bad. Because Abby was Abby but Ginger could have been a different kind of bad than Abby. Go figure the great minds behind television, but I don’t think anyone would tell you the truth anyway. Nobody likes to say, here, I’m responsible for this decision. Which is something in my life that really ticks me off. I mean, what do I care? I care, but say what is the truth and then we can move forward. All I know is that I really liked David and I really like Michael and I felt like they were allies for me and then I didn’t have anyone.

AS: I understand. What did you do immediately after that?

Kim Lankford: I don’t know exactly what I did. I think I went into a hole. I continued going out for things I didn’t get and I was upset. I don’t know. I did an episode of “The Hitchhiker.” That was the thing that spiraled me back up. I was working with Bo Hopkins. Then I went to London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. I then did “Murphy’s Law” with George Segal and being a recurring character on that show. I think that lasted a season or two.

Floyd also asks…

It's been said that she's in Sam Peckinpah's "Convoy," but I haven't ever found her in that film. Can you ask her where she is in that movie?

Kim Lankford: They cut it out. It would be hard to find! I wanted the reel. Sam was really sick after that and I wasn’t able to get the reel. It must be somewhere, in Peckinpah’s archives. But I played with Burt Young there on location for so long with them. It must have been a month or two. It was a great time but a bit of fiasco though because Sam was really sick and so there were problems on the set that way. It was great that I was there but disappointing I wasn’t in it.

Joe from Yonkers, NY asks

I didn't get a chance to see your brief stint on the Fox show “Point Pleasant;” however, will we see you in any future developments?

Kim Lankford: I didn’t know I was on the show. Must be a look-alike or my evil twin.

Joe also asks: Do you keep in touch with any of the knots landing circuit?

Kim Lankford: Mostly Julie Harris is the one I’ve kept in touch with and since she’s had her stroke, we’ve been less in touch. We’re all friends; I just don’t see them as much. And Tonya Crowe. I haven’t talked to her since I moved to Colorado, but we’ve been friends.

Seaviewer from Australia asks

 Hi Kim, I have a couple of questions about "Terror Among Us", the TV movie you made with Ted Shackelford. It's always intriguing when something like this happens. I was wondering, were you cast together or was it just coincidence? Is it difficult for two actors who have been working together on a series to now react to each other as two different characters?

Kim Lankford: It was a coincidence. And no it wasn’t difficult. Because you are different characters. But yes, it was a coincidence, but it was a wonderful coincidence. We had more camaraderie behind the scenes, but on camera, he’s not Gary, nor was I Ginger, so it was very easy to keep them separated.

AS: What role did you play in that?

Kim Lankford: I was an airline attendant.

Cosmic Steeple from Weatherford Texas asks,

One of the highlights of the reunion movie for me was your cameo appearance. Were you surprised when they asked you to appear?

Kim Lankford: I was thrilled they asked me to appear. As I said before, I thought it was very clever how they had Ginger divorce Kenny and visit the cul de sac. Being on the set again was just a fun time. My part didn’t take very long to do but getting to see everyone at once again was great.

Cosmic Steeple also asks:

Did you enjoy the musical aspect of the show.... getting to sing as well as act?

Kim Lankford: I loved it. I didn’t really get to do it until my last year but it just became an extension of my personality. I did like a lot that my character left to become a professional singer. Ginger really entered another level by doing that.

Sunshine Boy from London asks

Donna Mills has said that she received a frosty welcome initially, and that season 2 was quite tense.... Could you comment on this? Were people a little threatened at the arrival of a new female character?

Kim Lankford: Frosty? I’m not sure. I know I like Donna very much, we’re still friends, and that I liked her when she got to the set. The show really needed someone like her and thought we benefited a lot. Donna brought a lot of glamour and a different perspective to things.

AS: Were there any other characters that might have been threatening to people? How did you feel about Lisa Hartman coming on as Ciji?

Kim Lankford: Well … Lisa was brought on as the hip person on the show. They put a lot of effort into bringing her out and building her up. Yet Kenny and I were the contemporary couple. So yeah, it was threatening to have Lisa come onto the show. I got a little blindsided. But then again, as a fan I love the Ciji character. And I really adore Lisa. She’s so good; we used to pal around and go shopping and stuff. I just don’t see why any character had to preclude any other character.

AS: And you thought that the contemporary slot was going to go to Ciji?

Kim Lankford: It seemed that way at first, but then her character went in such an obviously bad direction that I didn’t feel like she was brought in to be as similar anymore.

Sunshine Boy UK also asks: Constance McCashin! A firm fan favourite - was she as popular on set as off?

Kim Lankford: Yes, everybody liked Constance. She had many friends. In fact, after I left the show she was very supportive. She was the first person I told about that meeting, and that I was going to leave the show. She was afraid that she was going to leave the show. And I told her no, it was I.

AS: What an awful feeling.

Kim Lankford: Terrible.

AS: He also asked, what’s your favorite season? Would you say it was the first one, because it had “Constant Companion?”

Kim Lankford: The first season was a glorious season. The first season had all those things, you don’t know if you’re going to get picked up. There’s a different dynamic to the first season. So I guess in the purest sense of Knots Landing, it was its first season. Maybe then it was my favorite season; I don’t know. But I loved all of the seasons. I loved the opportunity of being able to work, knowing you had the ability to fix things that didn’t go right in the next script. You were always working on your character. That is what’s wonderful about doing a series.

Art Swift can be reached at aswift@arthurswift.com

Copyright 2005 Knots Landing Online.