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Heather Locklear, many would argue, made “Melrose Place.”
Will she do it again?
Starting tonight, the actress moves back to the franchise that was her greatest TV success. She reprises the role of Amanda Woodward, shark in public relations and personal affairs, in The CW’s update of the ’90s drama.
It’s not the first time Locklear has been a later addition to the show. During the original run on Fox, Amanda was introduced midway through the first season (1992-93) as a “special guest star”; she retained that billing for the series. (She gets similar treatment this time, during her scheduled seven-episode arc.)
Formerly the complex’s owner, Amanda resides at Melrose Place again, taking the apartment of the murdered Sydney Andrews (Laura Leighton, who continues on the revival in “flashbacks”). The PR background makes it inevitable for Amanda to deal with Ella Flynn (Katie Cassidy), the sort of sharp-edged publicity maven Amanda is … or, at least, used to be.
Ratings for early episodes have dropped from week to week. As with “Melrose Place” the first time around, though, the Locklear factor should not be underestimated. (She’s arriving as two other cast members, Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and Colin Egglesfield, are preparing to leave the show.)
The new “Melrose” has Locklear’s seal of approval.
“When I saw the pilot episode, I thought, ‘Ooh, 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 Dr. Peter Burns to Locklear’s Amanda) 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!’ ”
Locklear might have been back on “Melrose Place” from the start, but she wasn’t wild about the producers’ initial plans for Amanda. She confirms that early on, “they’d talked to me and showed me some of the stories, and I decided I didn’t want to be dead in the pool.”
When last seen, Amanda had faked her death, along with Peter.
“Both of those characters weren’t ones to sit on a beach for too long,” Locklear reasons, adding that Amanda is again “ready for action. Something’s going down with her company, and she has to come back and fix it.”
