Plenty of TV couples can sell a love scene. Donna Mills and Ted Shackelford apparently didn’t have to work quite that hard.
The two spent years heating up the Knots Landing cul-de-sac as Abby Cunningham and Gary Ewing, but according to Mills, not all of that chemistry disappeared when the director yelled “cut.”
During the August 24 episode of the Creators Inc. Podcast, the 85-year-old Hollywood veteran sat down with host Andy Bachman, who asked whether the sparks she felt with Shackelford ever lingered once the cameras stopped rolling.
“Well, yes. I mean, you can’t just cut that off,” she explained. “It is real in your being, in your body, and so you don’t just cut it off. You have, you know, 100 crew standing around, so you know nothing is going to happen. But yeah, the feelings and everything, they’re still there.”
Turns out, Shackelford had more than one thing going for him. Later in the conversation, the Creators Inc. founder asked which of her Knots Landing leading men she’d rank No. 1 in the kissing department. “Ted was the best kisser,” she said. “We blended so well. I mean, we just did. We just like fit together.”
For all the sexual tension, however, Gary and Abby’s romance stayed Gary and Abby’s.
“It didn’t lead to anything else,” Mills continued. “He was married at the time. He actually got divorced, but not because of me.”
Shackelford was married to Janis Leverenz for much of his early Knots Landing run. The pair wed in 1976 and called it quits in 1987 after 11 years of marriage. Mills, meanwhile, has never walked down the aisle. The famously independent actress has been with actor Larry Gilman since 2001, telling The Daily Beast that the two “combined our lives” without combining everything else.
Her real-life love story aside, Mills has never exactly been shy about why those Gary-and-Abby scenes worked. Earlier this month, when Entertainment Tonight asked just how steamy things got with Shackelford, she didn’t exactly play coy. “I mean, look at Ted,” Mills joked, before calling her former co-star a “sweetheart.” Her verdict on filming those scenes? “It was fun. I can’t deny it.”
And decades later, plenty of the people who watched all that heat unfold are still paying attention.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Bachman shifted from Mills’ Knots Landing past to what she’s doing with that staying power now. The actress joined OnlyFans through Creators Inc. in July, and Bachman said she’s already doing “many six figures” on the platform.
“It’s amazing watching you tap into this audience that was always there for you,” he told her.
Mills isn’t the only familiar face in Bachman’s orbit proving a loyal fan base doesn’t expire just because the decade does. Creators Inc. managed Shannon Elizabeth’s move to OnlyFans, where the American Pie star grossed more than $1.2 million in her first week, while Emmy winner Jaime Pressly joined Bachman’s roster ahead of her own launch in May.
Earlier this year, Denise Richards and Carmen Electra also shot their first joint OnlyFans collaboration at the company’s Los Angeles content house.
