Gold Star: Kerry Butler (Soaps In Depth 2/28/06)
Kerry Butler (Claudia) is this issue's outstanding performer

Even New Yorkers familiar with Kerry Butler's stage work had to be taken aback by her One Life to Live debut as Claudia, the old flame Nash burned but good. Nowhere in sight was the quirky ingenue we knew and loved in Broadway's Hairspray and Little Shop of Horrors; the actress had deftly replaced that crowd-pleasing persona with an entirely new character, one that was far more cunning than kooky.


Put to the Tess
The moment we saw Claudia sizing up unexpected visitor Tess in rehab, we suspected there was more to the poor little rich girl than met our eyes. Her hair was a stringy tangle, her face, wan, yet something in her eyes struck as as formidable, perhaps even a little bit dangerous. Of course, her expression changed in a flash, from wary to wounded, the instant her guest finished the sentence "I'm in love..." with the words "...with Nash Brennan."

From that moment on, Butler made the most of a golden opportunity to display her remarkable range and establish herself as not merely a new soap performer but a true soap star. One minute Claudia was nervous as a cat, stuttering every syllable, the next she was tossing off bon mots like a socialite at happy hour. Our favorite: After her successor introduced herself as "just Tess," she snarked back, "So I'm supposed to spill my guts, in private, to a woman with one name and no taste?"


Cry-Baby
In scene after scene, Butler careened with breathtaking precision from pissed to pathetic and back, making us wonder what was real and what was for show. Sure, the fallen Paris Hilton sobbed, "It's bad enough being in here without a visit from my replacement!" But she also smiled like a cat to a canary when Tess declined to discuss what she'd "put [Nash] through." No, Jess' naughty half insisted, "You wouldn't believe [what I am]."

"Try me," Claudia cooed, sensing that she'd stumbled upon her foe's Achilles' heel.


The One That Got Away...For Now
When Nash showed up, Butler illuminated still another side of Claudia: the heartbroken jilted lover. While the hunk tended to his girlfriend, Claudia went through the motions of fixing her hair. She even flirted when her ex asked how she was. "Recovering," she joked. "That's what we addicts like to say."

However, it wasn't until Nash had left her alone that Butler revealed what really makes Claudia tick. "You screwed with the wrong woman this time," she hissed, then, effecting the baby voice that clearly had fooled her family forever, added, "That bad man hurt me, Daddy."

Is it any wonder that by the time Claudia's two-day introduction was done, OLTL had announced that Butler had been signed to a contract? Good job, Kerry. Great move, OLTL.

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