By Joe Puccio

Glamourous, seductive, beautiful, and cunning are just four of the appropriate adjectives that can be used to accurately describe either the real-life identity or the made-up persona of prolific Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated Hollywood pillar Morgan Fairchild. But scientific? Add that to the abundant list of true traits as well.

The legendary Dallas, Texas-born thespian, with an incredible career spanning a staggering seven decades, is perhaps best known for her iconic soap opera – both daytime and primetime – roles that she’s embraced and managed to make her own throughout the years. From her four-year small screen debut as Jennifer Pace on Search for Tomorrow to her memorable turn as Jordan Roberts on Falcon Crest in the mid-1980s all the way through her tenure on the still running The Bold and the Beautiful, initially in 2009 and reprising the part this year, Fairchild has been firmly entrenched in television viewers’ homes for nearly 60 years.

“I’ve always been fascinated with anything to do with science. I’m a nerd,” Fairchild proclaimed, during a recent conversation with Generation X Wire. “I wanted to be a doctor or a paleontologist when I was a kid. Louis Pasteur (French chemist/pharmacist/microbiologist) was actually my childhood idol. I’ve always kept my hands in those types of things.”

Fairchild’s interest in systematic studies of the world stems from her proclivities for activism, specifically social causes such as AIDS research and environmentalism, the former a passion that actually proved to be both rewarding as well as a detriment. “By the time Rock Hudson got sick (1984), I was the only person in show business they could have go on Nightline to explain what a retrovirus was because I’d been following it already. It was a bunch of Congress people, some doctors, and me, talking about AIDS. I lost a lot of friends who didn’t want me being around their kids since I’d visit hospitals and I also lost a lot of work because people deemed me controversial,” she conceded. “But it was the best thing I ever did with my life. I testified before Congress to get funding for AIDS research, I’ve worked with Dr. (Anthony) Fauci and C. Everett Koop, who was the Surgeon General at the time, and did a lot of educational videos. And being an Aquarius, I’m always trying to save the world. It’s a natural instinct,” she continued, smiling.

Before Fairchild became a glitzy TV siren, her entry into the industry came via a considerably more lowkey manner – as a double for Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde, the Warren Beatty-starring Best Picture nominee that became one of the highest-grossing films of 1967, partially due to the “fact” that the ingenue knew how to drive a stick shift. “Of course, being an actor, I lied,” she admitted. “I asked some of the guys to try to teach me as quickly as they could. I was 16 at the time and I got to the location, about an hour outside of Dallas, in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. I couldn’t find the set, dawn is breaking, and I see a silhouette of a man walking towards me. I asked him if he knew where it was and he showed me. It was Warren Beatty, and Warren Beatty at 28 years old with the sun coming up behind him was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen,” she laughed.

Although soap opera appearances would eventually be Fairchild’s particular emblematic forte, her frequent contributions to another genre of the medium – situation comedies – cannot be understated. Minor parts on Happy Days, The Bob Newhart Show, and Mork & Mindy led to meatier roles on Murphy Brown, for which she received her first Emmy Award nomination, Roseanne, where she played Sandra Bernhard’s girlfriend, and Friends, as the mother of Matthew Perry’s Chandler Bing.

Working on Roseanne in 1992 added fuel to the fire of Fairchild’s apparently polarizing career choices, portraying a bisexual character in an era when such representations were still taboo. But in staying true to her convictions and beliefs, it didn’t phase her. “When I was offered the role, they told me it was to play Sandra’s lipstick lesbian lover. Because of my AIDS activism and because I grew up in the theater, I’d been around gay people my entire life. My agent said he didn’t know if I should do it since it was controversial. And I felt that’s why I should do it – to put a face on something that many people consider to be scary,” she contended. “I read the script and thought it was hysterical. Sandra would talk about her girlfriend on the show all the time and the last person you’d expect to see when she opened the door was Morgan Fairchild. I think Ellen (DeGeneres) had come out already, but it really wasn’t being covered so I thought Roseanne (Barr) was very brave to do it.”

Currently, the avid movie memorabilia collector’s (“I started collecting Marilyn Monroe posters and lobby cards in the ‘60s and I have a perfume bottle from Ginger Rogers’ estate”) primary focus is on her new podcast, whimsically titled 2 Bitches From Texas, which she hosts with her sister, fellow actress Cathryn Hartt. “My sister, who has a Juilliard degree, and I have always been close, but we realized recently that we weren’t talking as much because of our schedules. We’d always talked about doing something together and, to be honest, John Edward (psychic medium) gave me a reading and suggested that I should try expanding and become creative in other ways. And I thought about podcasting, which is the new hip thing,” she smiled.

Tackling a wide variety of topics from acting to politics to social media, the fortnightly – Fairchild hopes to go weekly soon – series premiered this past October with Knots Landing star Donna Mills as its inaugural guest. “I, of course, touched on Knots Landing but I was more interested in exploring why she decided to adopt at 54 and what it was like to be a new mother at that age, and details about her winery” she explained. “One of the most rewarding things from doing it is the feedback from listeners who love learning things they didn’t know.”

Other past visitors to the podcast include academic author Tom Nichols, influencer Nic Suarez, political scientist Norman Ornstein, and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Gen V actress Jaz Sinclair, solidifying quite an array of diverse personalities. “I have eclectic interests like counterterrorism, foreign policy, and epidemiology. And fortunately, I’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of terrific people throughout my career,” Fairchild stressed. “There’s no central theme to our podcast. We have a lot of fun, we laugh a lot, and we also tell stupid stories. I want people to feel like they’re having a good time, but they may learn something too. I love it.”

Watch or listen to the 2 Bitches From Texas podcast here.

Follow Morgan Fairchild on her website here.
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