Victoria Lord: Difference between revisions
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===2000s=== |
===2000s=== |
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Viki is diagnosed with [[breast cancer]] in 2000, but survives after a mastectomy. In 2001, a girl named [[Natalie Buchanan|Natalie Balsom]] makes the startling claim that she is Viki and Clint's biological daughter, which is confirmed by a [[genetic fingerprinting|DNA test]]. It is ultimately determined that Viki's enemy Mitch Laurence had secretly raped a drugged Viki around the same time she had conceived a child with Clint. Viki had unknowingly become pregnant with fraternal twins, one fathered by Clint (Natalie) and the other fathered by Mitch (Jessica). Mitch's daughter had been taken during delivery, and Viki had never known that she had more than one child. Mitch, however, had wanted his daughter to grow up loved by Viki in the lap of luxury, and had kidnapped Clint's child. She had been replaced with Mitch's daughter (who would become Jessica), and Clint's daughter (who would become Natalie) had been given away. Niki Smith emerges during the ordeal, but Viki recovers. Ben is accidentally shot and left in a coma in 2002; he dies in 2004, just in time for his heart to be transplanted into an ailing Viki. Jessica is afflicted with dissociative identity disorder herself in 2005; though the condition is not hereditary, Viki is later devastated to learn that Jessica's illness is her fault. During Jessica's childhood, Niki had emerged from time to time and taken Jessica with her to bars, where Jessica had been sexually molested by a man named Norman Leeds. This realization helps Jessica integrate her personalities. Shortly after the death of ex-father-in-law Asa in 2007, Viki leaves Llanview suddenly. She later tells her family she is in "[[Paris]]," and they assume she means she is in [[France]]. Viki is actually in [[Paris, Texas|Paris]], [[Texas]], working as a waitress in a diner to forget the troubles of her life and rediscover herself. She meets patron [[Charlie Banks (One Life to Live)|Charlie Banks]], and the two later begin seeing one another. Viki ultimately returns to Llanview, and Charlie's search for his estranged son [[Jared Banks|Jared]] leads him there as well. Viki and Charlie resume their relationship, but break up when Viki discovers that Charlie had lied about the identity of his son in extenuating circumstances. Viki's heart stops when she is in a car accident with Dorian, but Dorian revives her. Reexamining her life, Viki reunites with Charlie, and they marry on August 4, 2009. Their happiness is short lived and comes crashing down when [[Mitch Laurence]] returns and wreaks havoc on Viki's family. He kills [[Jared Banks]] and beings to manipulate Charlie's grief, causing he and Viki to drift apart. Charlie then conspires with Dorian to kill Mitch but at the last minute Dorian tries to stop him but he winds up shooting a kidnapped Jessica. Jessica survives her gun shot wound but can;t remember anything past 1999 due to Mitch's electro shock therapy while in his possession. This coupled with Charlie's brief re-lapse into alcoholism causes Viki to ask for a divorce on March 4, 2010. |
Viki is diagnosed with [[breast cancer]] in 2000, but survives after a mastectomy. In 2001, a girl named [[Natalie Buchanan|Natalie Balsom]] makes the startling claim that she is Viki and Clint's biological daughter, which is confirmed by a [[genetic fingerprinting|DNA test]]. It is ultimately determined that Viki's enemy Mitch Laurence had secretly raped a drugged Viki around the same time she had conceived a child with Clint. Viki had unknowingly become pregnant with fraternal twins, one fathered by Clint (Natalie) and the other fathered by Mitch (Jessica). Mitch's daughter had been taken during delivery, and Viki had never known that she had more than one child. Mitch, however, had wanted his daughter to grow up loved by Viki in the lap of luxury, and had kidnapped Clint's child. She had been replaced with Mitch's daughter (who would become Jessica), and Clint's daughter (who would become Natalie) had been given away. Niki Smith emerges during the ordeal, but Viki recovers. Ben is accidentally shot and left in a coma in 2002; he dies in 2004, just in time for his heart to be transplanted into an ailing Viki. Jessica is afflicted with dissociative identity disorder herself in 2005; though the condition is not hereditary, Viki is later devastated to learn that Jessica's illness is her fault. During Jessica's childhood, Niki had emerged from time to time and taken Jessica with her to bars, where Jessica had been sexually molested by a man named Norman Leeds. This realization helps Jessica integrate her personalities. Shortly after the death of ex-father-in-law Asa in 2007, Viki leaves Llanview suddenly. She later tells her family she is in "[[Paris]]," and they assume she means she is in [[France]]. Viki is actually in [[Paris, Texas|Paris]], [[Texas]], working as a waitress in a diner to forget the troubles of her life and rediscover herself. She meets patron [[Charlie Banks (One Life to Live)|Charlie Banks]], and the two later begin seeing one another. Viki ultimately returns to Llanview, and Charlie's search for his estranged son [[Jared Banks|Jared]] leads him there as well. Viki and Charlie resume their relationship, but break up when Viki discovers that Charlie had lied about the identity of his son in extenuating circumstances. Viki's heart stops when she is in a car accident with Dorian, but Dorian revives her. Reexamining her life, Viki reunites with Charlie, and they marry on August 4, 2009. Their happiness is short lived and comes crashing down when [[Mitch Laurence]] returns and wreaks havoc on Viki's family. He kills [[Jared Banks]] and beings to manipulate Charlie's grief, causing he and Viki to drift apart. Charlie then conspires with Dorian to kill Mitch but at the last minute Dorian tries to stop him but he winds up shooting a kidnapped Jessica. Jessica survives her gun shot wound but can;t remember anything past 1999 due to Mitch's electro shock therapy while in his possession. This coupled with Charlie's brief re-lapse into alcoholism causes Viki to ask for a divorce on March 4, 2010. |
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==2010s== |
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With Dorian's meddling, Viki and Charlie reconcile and, she stops the divorce proceedings. Vikie then must deal with Jessica thinking she is a teen, while Charlie gets a job as an architect, working with the town's Mayor, Dorian. Viki then becomes worried that there are romantic feelings between Dorian and Charlie, fearing they may embark upon an affair. Charlie assures Viki of his love and, they plot to reunite Dorian with her ex-husband, [[David Vickers]]. |
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==Alternate personalities== |
==Alternate personalities== |
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Revision as of 02:05, 17 August 2010
| Victoria Lord Banks | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| One Life to Live character | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| File:Viki Davidson.jpg Erika Slezak as Victoria Lord Banks in the current One Life to Live title opening | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Portrayed by | Gillian Spencer Joanne Dorian Erika Slezak | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Duration | 1968–present | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| First appearance | Episode 1, July 15, 1968 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Created by | Agnes Nixon | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Victoria "Viki" Lord Banks (previously Burke, Riley, Buchanan, Carpenter and Davidson) is the principal fictional character on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live, and the only character from the premiere episode still present on the series. Originated by Gillian Spencer on July 15, 1968,[2] Viki has been portrayed by Erika Slezak since March 17, 1971.[3]
One of the longest-running characters on American daytime television, Viki has weathered widowhood (three times), divorce, a brain aneurysm, a near-death out-of-body experience, being shot, suffering a stroke, breast cancer, heart disease, a heart transplant, the abduction of three of her five children as infants, the deaths of two siblings, and the death of her daughter from lupus. Most notably, she has suffered from dissociative identity disorder on and off for decades.
Casting and awards
Victoria Lord was originally portrayed by Gillian Spencer from One Life to Live's premiere in 1968 until 1970.[2] The role was briefly recast with Joanne Dorian in 1970,[2] and again in 1971 with Slezak,[2][3] who has since become synonymous with the character. Two other actresses have portrayed Viki while Slezak was on maternity leave: Christine Jones in 1980 and 1981,[4] and Judith Barcroft in 1987.[4] In the summer of 2003, Slezak's real-life daughter, Amanda Davies, portrayed a teenaged Viki in flashbacks.[3]
Slezak has received six Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress for portraying Viki in 1984,[5] 1986,[6] 1992,[7] 1995,[8] 1996,[9] and 2005.[10] She holds the record for the most Daytime Emmy wins by a single actress; actors Anthony Geary and Justin Deas also each possess six Daytime Emmys, Geary for a single character and Deas for various characters.[3]
Storylines
Early years
The eldest child of domineering millionaire publisher Victor Lord, Viki has little time for romance when One Life to Live begins in 1968. She clashes with reporter Joe Riley, but they soon fall in love; Victor disapproves and tries keep them apart. Torn between pleasing her father and following her heart, Viki develops a wild alternate personality named Niki Smith, who falls in love with another man. Viki's illness — apparently caused by seeing her pregnant mother fall down the stairs as a child — is eventually treated, and she and Joe marry in 1969. Joe is presumed dead in 1970, but reappears alive in 1972 just in time to see Viki marry Steve Burke. Viki's younger sister Meredith dies in 1973; Viki initially stays married to Steve, but ultimately divorces him and remarries Joe in 1974. That same year, Dr. Dorian Cramer blames board member Viki for her suspension from Llanview hospital, and a rivalry is born that will last decades. In 1975 Dorian becomes Victor's private physician, and then marries him. Viki learns she has a half-brother, Tony Lord, and Dorian plots to keep Victor's fortune for herself. In 1976, Victor dies, Dorian wreaks havoc on the Lord family, and Viki and Joe have a son, Kevin. Viki is arrested for the murder of Marco Dane in 1978, but later exonerated. Joe himself dies from a brain tumor in 1979, and Viki gives birth to their second son, Joe Jr., in 1980.
1980s
After a disastrous relationship with con man Ted Clayton, in 1982 Viki marries newspaper editor Clint Buchanan, who adopts both of her sons. Viki is shocked to discover in 1985 that her former ward Tina Clayton is in fact her half-sister, the daughter of Victor and Irene Manning, Viki's childhood friend. Thanks to the machinations of Tina's boyfriend Mitch Laurence, Viki succumbs to the pressure and Niki Smith returns. Posing as Viki, Niki divorces Clint; Viki later overcomes her illness with the realization that it had actually been triggered by her witnessing Victor and Irene in bed many years before. Clint and Viki remarry, and Viki gives birth to their daughter Jessica in 1986. In 1988 Viki learns that she had given birth to a baby in high school, but her father had a hypnotist erase the memory. Viki's memory is restored in 1989 when she meets Roger Gordon, the father of her child, whom she had married at the time but had been presumed dead. Roger's daughter Megan is Viki's daughter; she and Viki ultimately get past their initial conflicts.
1990s
New Llanview mayor Viki is shot and suffers a stroke in 1990; Niki Smith emerges to aid a paralyzed Viki stand up and shoot Johnny Dee Hesser as he attacks Tina. Viki recovers, but later donates a kidney to Megan, who is suffering from lupus; Megan dies anyway in 1992. Viki has an affair with Sloan Carpenter; she and Clint divorce in 1994, and she marries Sloan. Sloan dies soon after, just as the existence of a second child of Victor and Irene's is revealed. Viki's stress reaches a critical point when Dorian tells Viki a secret of which she thought Viki had been aware: the fact that Victor had sexually abused his daughter as a child. With this trauma being what had actually initiated Viki's dissociative identity disorder, she splinters into several personalities, one of whom imprisons Dorian in a secret room below Llanfair. The reviled Todd Manning is proven to be Victor and Irene's son, and Viki recovers after remembering that one of her personalities had actually smothered Victor in 1976. Viki meets and falls in love with Ben Davidson in 1999, and they marry in 2000; he turns out to be Asa Buchanan's illegitimate son, and Clint's brother.
2000s
Viki is diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000, but survives after a mastectomy. In 2001, a girl named Natalie Balsom makes the startling claim that she is Viki and Clint's biological daughter, which is confirmed by a DNA test. It is ultimately determined that Viki's enemy Mitch Laurence had secretly raped a drugged Viki around the same time she had conceived a child with Clint. Viki had unknowingly become pregnant with fraternal twins, one fathered by Clint (Natalie) and the other fathered by Mitch (Jessica). Mitch's daughter had been taken during delivery, and Viki had never known that she had more than one child. Mitch, however, had wanted his daughter to grow up loved by Viki in the lap of luxury, and had kidnapped Clint's child. She had been replaced with Mitch's daughter (who would become Jessica), and Clint's daughter (who would become Natalie) had been given away. Niki Smith emerges during the ordeal, but Viki recovers. Ben is accidentally shot and left in a coma in 2002; he dies in 2004, just in time for his heart to be transplanted into an ailing Viki. Jessica is afflicted with dissociative identity disorder herself in 2005; though the condition is not hereditary, Viki is later devastated to learn that Jessica's illness is her fault. During Jessica's childhood, Niki had emerged from time to time and taken Jessica with her to bars, where Jessica had been sexually molested by a man named Norman Leeds. This realization helps Jessica integrate her personalities. Shortly after the death of ex-father-in-law Asa in 2007, Viki leaves Llanview suddenly. She later tells her family she is in "Paris," and they assume she means she is in France. Viki is actually in Paris, Texas, working as a waitress in a diner to forget the troubles of her life and rediscover herself. She meets patron Charlie Banks, and the two later begin seeing one another. Viki ultimately returns to Llanview, and Charlie's search for his estranged son Jared leads him there as well. Viki and Charlie resume their relationship, but break up when Viki discovers that Charlie had lied about the identity of his son in extenuating circumstances. Viki's heart stops when she is in a car accident with Dorian, but Dorian revives her. Reexamining her life, Viki reunites with Charlie, and they marry on August 4, 2009. Their happiness is short lived and comes crashing down when Mitch Laurence returns and wreaks havoc on Viki's family. He kills Jared Banks and beings to manipulate Charlie's grief, causing he and Viki to drift apart. Charlie then conspires with Dorian to kill Mitch but at the last minute Dorian tries to stop him but he winds up shooting a kidnapped Jessica. Jessica survives her gun shot wound but can;t remember anything past 1999 due to Mitch's electro shock therapy while in his possession. This coupled with Charlie's brief re-lapse into alcoholism causes Viki to ask for a divorce on March 4, 2010.
2010s
With Dorian's meddling, Viki and Charlie reconcile and, she stops the divorce proceedings. Vikie then must deal with Jessica thinking she is a teen, while Charlie gets a job as an architect, working with the town's Mayor, Dorian. Viki then becomes worried that there are romantic feelings between Dorian and Charlie, fearing they may embark upon an affair. Charlie assures Viki of his love and, they plot to reunite Dorian with her ex-husband, David Vickers.
Alternate personalities
Currently, all six of Viki's alternate personalities are integrated with her baseline psyche. In order of their first appearance on One Life to Live, they are:
- Nicole "Niki" Smith - a devil-may-care, sexually promiscuous party girl, approximately the same age as Viki. Niki has appeared more times than all of the other alters combined, and is very skilled at masquerading as Viki when necessary to hide her re-emergence. Niki has had two serious relationships with Vinny Wolek and Harry O'Neill, neither of whom realized at the time that Niki was an alter of Viki.
- Tommy - A teenage male alter emerged in 1995, who embodied Viki's anger and rage at her abuse. Tommy usually emerged to protect Princess, and once threw Dorian Lord down the Llanfair staircase.
- Jean Randolph - Jean Randolph is the calm, cool, collected and calculating caretaker of all the other alters, who took over when Viki's abusive childhood was revealed. Her name is derived from that of Viki's mother, Eugenia Randolph Lord. Jean blackmailed con man David Vickers into divorcing Viki's sister, Tina, and also freed Viki's son, Joey, from Dorian Lord's clutches by imprisoning Dorian in a secret room in the basement of Llanfair, which led Joey to believe that Dorian left him. Jean then forced Dorian to marry David to keep them both occupied and away from Viki's loved ones.
- Princess - a manifestation of Viki as a seven year old girl. She is a traumatized child who is constantly reliving the molestation by Viki's father
- Tori - Tori emerged in 1995 and after Dorian revealed the truth of Victor's abuse to Viki. It was established that Tori was the alter who murdered Victor Lord in 1976 (It would later be revealed that Victor survived and did not die until 2003. However Dorian has planted a seed of doubt regarding that notion, suggesting that the man who re-emerged as Victor in 2003 was a fraud). Although her declared mission was to force Viki to face the truth, she wreaked much destruction before getting around to that. Tori started undermining the Banner by feeding stories and information to rival newspaper editor Todd Manning, and she torched Llanfair, nearly killing Jessica in the blaze.
- Victor Lord - This personality is the image of her father within Viki. Very often, sexual abuse victims who develop alternate personalities do develop a personality to reflect their abuser. The Victor Lord personality only emerged two or three times, but one of the instances that he took over led Viki to attempt suicide by cutting her own wrists to "expel" Victor from her body.
Occasionally, circumstances have forced Viki to impersonate one of her alters, particularly Niki and Jean.
References
- ^ It is stated that Viki was 18 when Megan was born in 1963, putting her birth year at, 1945.
- ^ a b c d Schemering, Christopher (September 1985). The Soap Opera Encyclopedia. Ballantine Books. pp. 158–166. ISBN 0-345-32459-5 (1st edition).
{{cite book}}: Check|isbn=value: invalid character (help) - ^ a b c d "SOAP STAR STATS: Erika Slezak (Viki, OLTL)". SoapOperaDigest.com. Retrieved February 20, 2009.
- ^ a b Victoria Lord Davidson profile - SoapCentral.com
- ^ "Daytime Emmy Winners & Nominees: 1984". SoapOperaDigest.com. Retrieved February 20, 2009.
- ^ "Daytime Emmy Winners & Nominees: 1986". SoapOperaDigest.com. Retrieved February 20, 2009.
- ^ "Daytime Emmy Winners & Nominees: 1992". SoapOperaDigest.com. Retrieved February 20, 2009.
- ^ "Daytime Emmy Winners & Nominees: 1995". SoapOperaDigest.com. Retrieved February 20, 2009.
- ^ "Daytime Emmy Winners & Nominees: 1996". SoapOperaDigest.com. Retrieved February 20, 2009.
- ^ "Daytime Emmy Winners & Nominees: 2005". SoapOperaDigest.com. Retrieved February 20, 2009.
External links
- Victoria Lord Banks profile - SoapCentral.com
- "One Life to Live Timeline: Cult of Personalities". SoapOperaDigest.com. Retrieved February 19, 2009.
