Dimitri Marick
Dimitri Marick is a fictional character from the American ABC soap opera All My Children. The role has been most notably portrayed by Michael Nader, previously famed for his role on Dynasty. Former head writers Agnes Nixon and Lorraine Broderick created the character in 1991, designing him as a brooding and mysterious character based on heroes from gothic literature, such as Maxim de Winter from Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca and Heathcliff from Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights. The character's introduction raised All My Children in the Nielsen ratings, placing it consistently as the second most-watched daytime soap opera in the US.
Soon after his debut on the soap opera, Dimitri became a complex leading man and took part in some of the most notable plots of the 1990s. He had a very popular romance with Erica Kane. Dimitri and Erica's storylines include a tumultuous romance leading to two failed marriages and a miscarriage. One of the biggest obstacles in their relationship was Erica's vindinctive and manipulative daughter, Kendall Hart. Dimitri also had a popular romance with Alexandra Devane and a loving yet antagonistic relationship with his half-brother, Edmund Grey.
In July 1999, Nader was let go from All My Children due to budgetary considerations, however, he later returned in May 2000. The following year, the actor's arrest brought him and the character to the center of a large fan campaign organized by a group called the Loyalists, as well as a highly publicized lawsuit catching the attention of People and Entertainment Tonight, among other media outlets. As a result, Nader was let go again by the soap opera, with an official statement saying they would be prepared to consider having him return once he had addressed the lawsuit issues. The role was temporarily recast with actor Anthony Addabbo, who was negatively received by viewers, and let go shortly after his debut. Nader later stated in an interview that ABC had informed him that they had no intention of ever bringing him or the character back due to a lack of storyline. In 2004, Nader's suit was subsequently thrown out. In May 2013, after a twelve-year absence from All My Children, Nader was announced to be reprising the role, with his return airing on June 12, 2013.
Casting
Casting the role of Dimitri gave All My Children difficulty. The series' casting director, Judy Blye Wilson, tested between fifteen and twenty actors, and could not find the right actor for the job. Wilson then learned that the former Dynasty star, Michael Nader was available and suggested the show offer him the part.Before All My Children offered him the role of Dimitri Marick, Nader already planned on working in both Los Angeles and New York. "My fiancee, Beth Windsor, had literally just worked into being bicoastal," he said. "She had an apartment here and I had been seeking out some theater here in New York and would have been spending time both here and in L.A. So after we made the decision to go ahead with that game plan, this offer came on the table and when we worked out all the figures moneywise it was a great opportunity." Despite Nader's prime time success as Dynasty's Dex Dexter, he did not look down on daytime television. "The fact of the matter is we're in a different era," he said. "And if you look at the cutbacks in Hollywood, being on a soap is not of any less or more value than being in any other medium at this time." Another factor that contributed to his decision to join All My Children was the actors strike. He intended to stay on All My Children for a year. That year turned into more because the actor fell in love with New York.
Since finding the right actor to play Dimitri took such a long time, the show had already begun taping around the character for two weeks. Nader spent his first weeks on All My Children working overtime to catch up. "By the time we had resolved some of the terms," he said, "they were really against the wall in terms of back story.... In retrospect, I should have just slept on the set because it was like sixty or seventy pages a day!" Nader also taped his scenes out of sequence while dealing with sixteen different scripts from different points in the story. To keep each scene straight he gave them each a name that described the scene's main action. After those scenes were taped, they were spliced into the otherwise completed episodes. This went on for two weeks until the episodes were all caught up. Another complication Nader dealt with was the wardrobe. He said, "They had devised this sort of 'tapestry' layered look for Dimitri and it was like doing scenes inside a sauna." This was eventually rectified, but not before the actor lost around twelve pounds in the two weeks.
Michael Nader was fired from All My Children in July 1999, due to budget considerations, and Dimitri was killed off. This led to a fan outcry from viewers who campaigned for the actor's return. To partially appease them, the show's executive producer, Jean Dadario Burke, offered Nader his job back on a recurring basis. He rejected this offer because "after being a major character for so long, it didn't make any sense to me. So I declined. But if the network was interested in seriously discussing Dimitri's return on a contract basis I would love to go back."
In May 2000, he was rehired and brought back into the role with a multi-year contract. The return story scripted for the Dimitri character centered on the romance between his brother Edmund and his wife Alex. Dimitri was revealed to be alive just as his wife, Alex, and brother, Edmund, had sex for the first time. Nader said he wanted to create a deeper layer in the character instead of focusing solely on the love triangle between Dimitri, Alex, and Edmund. "I do hope to pursue some sort of subtle spiritual change, some perception that Dimitri is different," he said. He questioned the writers' storyline choice in not exploring the popular Dimitri and Erica romance again. "I found it sort of odd that they'd move me so far away from Susan Lucci|Susan," Nader said. "They're trying to explore these other themes."
Nader lost the role again in February 2001 as a result of the actor getting arrested for allegedly selling cocaine to an undercover police officer. All My Children released an official statement saying, "If Mr. Nader gets the help that he needs and addresses his problem, and it makes sense for the show, we would be prepared to speak with Michael in the future." The network put Nader on probation and ordered him to seek help for his problem.
Anthony Addabbo temporarily took over the role, first airing on April 6, 2001. To prepare for the role, he watched tapes of Nader's portrayal of Dimitri in order to see the relationships between Dimitri and other characters. Despite the fan protest against the role being recast, Addabbo told Soap Opera Digest he was not worried. "I don't find it intimidating," he said. "I know how they can come to love a certain actor portraying a role and how he plays the role and everything, but this happens in daytime so frequently that I didn't find it intimidating at all." Soap Opera Digest considered him an odd choice for a Dimitri recast since Addabbo usually portrayed "all-American good guys" such as Generations Jason Craig and Guiding Light's Jim LeMay. A large number of All My Children fans rejected Addabbo in the role and continued to campaign for Nader's return. The controversy forced the writers to lessen Dimitri's role on the show until July 2001 when Addabbo was let go "for storyline reasons", according to ABC's official statement.
During an interview, Nader told Soap Opera Digest that in late September 2001, ABC called a meeting with him to inform him that, though he resolved his personal problems, they had no intention of ever bringing him or the character back due to lack of story. Nader argued that other storyline possibilities existed since he and Dimitri received "a tremendous response" from viewers. "For years, Dimitri and Erica were a popular coupling," he said. "A good friend of mine, Jack Scalia, is on...that alone would be a dynamic triangle."
In May 2013, following a twelve-year absence from All My Children, Nader was announced to be reprising the role of Dimitri, scheduled to begin in June. Initially his first airdate was 3 June, however, due to Prospect Park's decision to reduce the number of episodes made available each week, he did not air until 12 June.
Development
Former head writers Agnes Nixon and Lorraine Broderick created the character Dimitri Marick in 1991. His original purpose was to rescue Natalie Marlowe from the well her sister, Janet Green, trapped her in. He was also designed as a rival for Natalie's current love interest, Trevor Dillon. Trevor and Natalie were a popular couple at that point and the writers wanted to create a viable obstacle for them. Really exciting, romantic, handsome leading man, so that there would be a real impediment; you know we'd have a really exciting love story between Trevor and somebody as different from Trevor as we could get...because Trevor is a wonderful, warm, teddy bear, lovable, down-to-earth, right-out-there guy- and Dimitri is very much opposite from that." Broderick characterized the character in an interview with Soap Opera Update, stating:Nixon and Broderick also crafted the character as a darkly brooding and mysterious man in the same vein as gothic literary heroes such as Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, Edward Rochester from Jane Eyre, and Maxim de Winter from Rebecca. Nixon used these characters as inspiration for Dimitri because, as she told Soap Opera Weekly, "In doing the 'stolen life' story, I felt that we needed something to follow that was also a little larger than life, very romantic, and gothic." The characters played a part in shaping Dimitri as well as his environment and storylines. Maxim de Winter's estate, Manderley, provided the inspiration for Dimitri's Pine Valley estate, Wildwind. The design was taken from both the description in Du Maurier's book and the depiction from the film Rebecca, a 1940 adaptation of the novel by Alfred Hitchcock. Like Mr. Rochester, the wife Dimitri falsely claims died years ago is revealed to be alive just before his marriage to another woman.
Nixon infused elements of those literatures into the Dimitri and Natalie romance with as well. "There's a gothic quality to it", she said, referring to the couple. "It's Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre. Everybody loves somebody who has a past and a secret- and certainly Dimitri does- which we haven't divulged yet. That heightens ones interest and suspense. It's a special situation but what really makes it special is the actor's talent, personalities, good looks, and chemistry." Since the writers created Dimitri as a very mysterious character, Michael Nader mostly stayed away from the press in order to help maintain that image. Whenever he did do an interview, he discussed the character in such a way as to add more mystery. Nader compared Dimitri to the Dynasty character he once portrayed, Dex Dexter. On Dynasty, "John James played the 'aw, shucks;' nice guy, and I played the guy who was on the edge, who would take care of business and not take any bull", he said. "Dimitri is sort of a darker Dex. Though I don't know exactly how dark to make him yet." Nader, as an actor, also provided the writers with more inspiration on the character. "The more we see of him, the more he inspires us", Broderick said. "It's just a wonderful marriage of actor and character He's giving us so many levels and such depth, that it's a challenge. But it's exciting. Dimitri is one of the characters that is so much fun to write."