Bianca Montgomery
Bianca Montgomery is a fictional character from the American daytime drama All My Children. Until Eden Riegel assumed the role, portraying the character from July 2000 to January 2010, the character was portrayed solely by child actresses: Lacey Chabert, Nathalie Paulding, Gina Gallagher, Caroline Wilde and Jessica Leigh Falborn. When Riegel decided to permanently exit the role, plans to recast were confirmed; in June 2010, Christina Bennett Lind replaced Riegel, and remained on the series through the original television finale episode, which aired September 23, 2011. In February 2013, it was announced that Riegel would be reprising her role as Bianca in a guest-arc on Prospect Park's continuation of All My Children.
The character of Bianca is the daughter of Erica Kane and the late Travis Montgomery, born onscreen on February 8, 1988. Her birthday was revised to February 9, 1984 on January 31, 2002 by the show's producers, and her age was stated as 16 in 2000. The middle name given to the character is Christine, after her paternal aunt, Christine Montgomery, and she is portrayed as sweet-natured and well-loved in the fictional community of Pine Valley. Shown to suffer from Reye's syndrome in infancy, as well as anorexia nervosa later in life, she overcomes both with the significant aid of her family. Her most notable storyline is her coming out as a lesbian in 2000, a moment that has been seen as a milestone for LGBT representation in media.
Outside of fiction, Bianca has emerged as a gay icon within the LGBT community. Newspapers such as The New York Times cite her as the first lead character on a major daytime drama to be a lesbian, and The Advocate calls her "the
most famous gay soap role of all time." She has been the subject and study of various academic works, said to have inspired soap opera writers to begin with the scripting of sexual identities of tortured teen characters, and is a heroine. Under Riegel's portrayal, her popularity has been cited as groundbreaking.
Background
Casting and character creation
As a teenager, Eden Riegel gave up on her pursuit of a successful acting career. She stated that she had seen a "number of talented people" who were struggling, and that she started to doubt whether she would ever have the success that she wanted. She decided that it was time to major in social and political theory, go to law school, and become a lawyer. This changed while she attended Harvard. While there, she received "a call from a casting director who thought that the five-foot-six beauty should audition to become Erica Kane’s daughter." Later, the character would eventually be revealed to be a lesbian. Producers did not tell Riegel she would be portraying a lesbian until after she won the role. "I was surprised," she said.All My Children creator Agnes Nixon cites that scripting Bianca as a lesbian was in part inspired by Chaz Bono's memoir Family Outing. Nixon explained the feelings she wanted expressed with the character's mother, Erica. She wanted to showcase the thought process and actions "most parents" have upon finding out that their child is gay: "I think the right word for Erica's reaction is denial," said Nixon. "I read Family Outing by Chastity Bono. Cher had loads of friends who were gay, but she wasn't able to deal with . In this prejudicial society in which we live, the first reaction from a parent usually is, 'What did I do wrong?'"
Nixon, well known for her socially relevant storylines, said that the makings for the Bianca story began in 1947; a college housemate "came out" to Nixon when Nixon was the same age Riegel had been in 2000. Nixon acknowledged that the show's original story featuring lesbian characters, which was broadcast in 1983, which lasted two months, did not work out as well at the time as she had hoped, and wanted to try again. "Now, in a soap, if you want to do a story about a social issue seriously, the character has to be really well integrated. Bianca's story is the result of that — with growth and maturity," she stated.
Riegel discussed Bianca's storyline with her sister, Tatiana. Tatiana, who is a lesbian and eighteen years Riegel's senior, became one of the primary people Riegel wanted to impress with the storyline. With Tatiana living in Los Angeles, where she works as a film editor and Riegel having lived on the East Coast most of her early life, the sisters did not grow up together but maintained a close relationship. Riegel took the role as an opportunity to bond with Tatiana over a character project, and said Tatiana was one of the people she was most concerned about in portraying Bianca's story.
At the time Riegel took over the role of Bianca, there were strict instructions from the show's writers and producers not to reveal Bianca as gay to anyone outside the show. Despite this, Riegel informed Tatiana two months before the storyline finally began. The revelation was easily envisioned by the sisters as a storyline from a soap opera due to Riegel having told Tatiana Bianca's secret on the day of their father's third wedding. Tatiana said that Riegel was "very excited" about informing her of Bianca's sexual orientation and that she was happy for her sister. "I just thought it was a kick that she would be playing a lesbian — specifically, Erica Kane's daughter!" said Tatiana.
Tatiana did have her concerns about the storyline. She did not want the show to do a gay stereotype. Riegel voiced the same concerns earlier on about the character; she clarified that she asked the show's writers and producers to make the character three-dimensional and not "so heavily centered" on the character's sexual orientation. Having grown up close to an out lesbian sister, who "came out" in her early 20s, Riegel was familiar with how Bianca should be if stereotypes were to be avoided. At the time of Tatiana's "coming-out" process, Riegel and brother Sam were children. Tatiana relayed that being gay was not an issue and that she could not remember having had a conversation with them about it at that age. By the time Riegel and Sam were old enough to know what being gay meant, they had grown to love Tatiana's girlfriend and the family was closer than before. Riegel having acquired the role of Bianca led her and Tatiana to discuss certain specifics of the character. Riegel's mindset was centered on what it must have been like for Tatiana to grow up as gay. She said that she had never heard Tatiana's whole coming-out story before and that it was nice to talk about.
A year and a half after Bianca's "coming out" as a lesbian, Riegel and Tatiana felt that the show had done "a great job" in telling the story of a gay woman and her struggles.
Characterization, story influence and recast
In a Variety magazine interview, Julie Hanan Carruthers, executive producer of the show, spoke of Bianca's character development. She gave insight into the "heart" of the story. "It was so successful," she said. "We did not tell a story about a lesbian. We told a story about a young girl coming out and her life around it. That was a big lesson to all of us here. It's really all about the story. If you can make people care on a human level, it's not sexual preference. It's about the human experience."The writers characterized Bianca's personality as kind-hearted but intolerant of nonsense. These traits were given to reflect the personalities of her parents and her late grandmother. Additionally, other characters in Bianca's family have been written as protective.
Megan McTavish, the show's head writer at the time, said she was "most astonished that fans elevated Bianca into one of the serial's 'tent poles' — soap parlance for characters who hold enormous sway with viewers". McTavish explained that if a character is nice to Bianca, the audience tends to like that character, and if he is mean to Bianca, the audience knows he is a bad guy. "It's stunning," she cited. "The lesbian girl became the moral tent pole of our show."
In a 2007 interview with TV Guide, former head writers of the series, James Harmon Brown and Barbara Esensten, stated that since Riegel's portrayal, the character is simply too iconic to ever recast. However, in 2010, Riegel decided to permanently exit the role, and plans to recast were subsequently confirmed. TV Guide Nelson Branco said, "Recasting a superstar is a very risky move, but is clearly determined to test fate."
In a March 30, 2010 interview with Soap Opera Digest, Riegel explained why she decided to move on from the character:
I had tried to make it work with All My Children. I don’t have a business head, so I don’t really make business decisions; every decision I make in my life is emotional and it was difficult to feel that the show wasn’t... that Bianca was getting lost. That who she was, was getting lost. I went back several times and they were so lovely to let me come back and play a character I love with the people I love so many times. But I felt that the people making the show didn’t really understand what Bianca was about anymore... It troubled me. I got letters from people to whom Bianca meant a great deal essentially saying, "Please don’t come back. We can't take it anymore."
On May 13, 2010, it was reported that All My Children had found a recast for the character, after a "long and careful" search. Actress Christina Bennett Lind, cited as having an "astonishing" resemblance to Riegel, was cast. " oozes goodness and we really needed that for Bianca. brought an integrity and honest innocence to the role that was very tough to match," stated Carruthers. "We turned the earth going through the candidates. When came in to read for the part, she was Bianca. I think it’ll be a very easy transition for the audience."
Although Riegel said it would be "very painful" to watch someone else portray Bianca, and that she would not want to watch, she later tweeted, " gets a new Bianca and she's super pretty! And, of course, by that I mean she looks like me. I wish her the very best of luck, of course, and will be cheering her on along with the rest of the fans." Lind regarded this as a compliment, and was appreciative of the support.
Lind said of assuming the role, "The audition for Bianca felt like an amusement park ride. It was such a thrill to go to an audition by plane rather than subway! I can only hope I do half of what did with the part. She played it with amazing grace and dignity. Now I need to breathe my own life into it." Regarding Bianca being the "moral center of Pine Valley" and the pressure of being a recast, Lind said she did feel pressure in the beginning. "I did look at some of footage online to prep for it. She, for obvious reasons, was so beautiful, real, and honest in her portrayal of Bianca." Lind stated that it ultimately came down to her not wanting to mimic Riegel:
Part of me feels very strongly that created a character that was so well-written, detailed, and complicated, and the element of being gay was part of who she was, but it did not define her. I sort of wanted to take that and breathe my own life into it and do something else by using myself rather than using someone else’s interpretation. I understand these emotions and all humans do, of wanting to support your family and be equal and be in love. Ultimately, I said, "I can feel the pressure, but I am going to let it go." The role is so full and rich that I thought, Well, now I am just going to throw myself into it.
Lind said there was no trepidation in taking on a gay role, and that she is "really proud" to portray Bianca. "I am surprised that the gay community is still struggling and fighting so many years later," she said. "They are still fighting for basic human rights. I am excited to be a part of that fight." Regarding most of Pine Valley being okay with Bianca being gay, Lind stated that she is "a little curious" to see some "sort of real-life conflict arrive and see that some people in her small town do not accept her sexuality." Lind clarified, "In a sense, that is pretty relevant and controversial and true. Because Pine Valley is the exception, it’s a beautiful utopia right now. I wouldn’t mind attacking those issues that are happening in small towns right now."