Heather Locklear on 'Melrose Place' 2.0: This is slick...but I didn't want to be dead in the pool

Six days 'til the b*tch is back on "Melrose Place."

Jay Bobbin sat down with Heather Locklear, who says, "Ella is like her protégée."

Q: What did you think about a "Melrose Place'' revival to begin with?
A: I was like, "Is the same cast coming back?'' When I realized they weren't, I thought, "Hmmm. Then why are they calling it 'Melrose Place?' I guess it's the pool.'' I figured they thought the name would bring viewers.

Q: What did you think of the show when you saw it?
A: When I saw the pilot episode, I thought, "Ooohh, this is slick!'' Like they had said, it wasn't the old "Melrose Place.'' Then I saw episode two, which I really loved. I had watched it that night with my boyfriend (Jack Wagner, who played Peter Burns to Locklear's Amanda Woodward) and my daughter Ava; she was kind of falling asleep, but she'd open her eyes every once in a while and see it and go, "Oh, Mom!'' And I'd think, "Oh, my gosh. That's where Jack and I met.''

Q: Had the new producers talked to you about returning early on?
A: They'd talked to me a little bit and showed me some of the stories, and I decided I didn't want to be dead in the pool. (Locklear says it originally was Amanda, not Sydney, who would have suffered that fate.) I thought, "That means my favorite character is not alive,'' and I felt it would be better to have her alive and not on the show.

Q: Do you like what they've done with Sydney, by keeping her alive in a sense?
A: I ran into Laura (Leighton, who plays Sydney) at my first table read for this, and we hugged for so long, It was also nice to see Thomas (Calabro, alias Michael Mancini), and for us to have our own little group. Then it really did feel like ``Melrose Place'' to me.

Q: Did the original show's actors socialize much back then?
A: Honestly, we were so busy when we were doing the first show, no one did. Well, maybe other people did, but I didn't. Even with people I didn't have relationships with then, it seems like we have more in common now, whether it's wisdom or something else.

Q: How did the producers pitch the present-day Amanda to you?
A: They said she didn't want to be on an island any more, and she's ready for action. She's now got a boyfriend who has a lot of money, and something's going down with her company, so she has to come back and fix it.

Q: Did you foresee that Amanda and Peter might end this way?
A: I never really thought about it, but I do think both of those characters weren't ones to sit on a beach for too long.

Q: Since Katie Cassidy has been positioned as your heir apparent as Ella on the new "Melrose Place,'' how do you find her?
A: She rocks! In real life, she's like this nurturing woman-child, so that in and of itself makes for an interesting dynamic between the two of us. And the dialogue they give her, and the way she does it, is pretty fantastic.

Q: Do you feel Ella will give Amanda a run for her money?
A: You know, they're not doing that just yet. It's more like Amanda is liking where she's going, and Ella is like her protégée

Q: What is it like to step back into the role of Amanda now?
A: It's weird. I just remember her thinking everyone else was incompetent, and that's really what it was, not thinking of her being a uber-bitch or anything like that. I still try to think the same way, but she's written differently. She definitely has things going on in the back of her mind, where it wasn't so much that way before.

Q: For Amanda to stay Amanda these days, does the character have to be amped up more?
A: I don't know how much more amping there is to do, unless you completely make her a robot and put walls up around her. Amanda didn't always have walls up; she had some vulnerability, and that's actually the best thing about her. Hopefully, I'll have more chances to show that. Little by little as I see the scripts, I see how they're reinventing Amanda or not, or making her the woman of wisdom. There's the feeling that she knows a lot more now.

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