Gray couldn’t understand what production was up to until her audition
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NEED TO KNOW
- Linda Gray played Sue Ellen Ewing, wife of J.R. Ewing, on Dallas throughout the series run from 1978 to 1991
- Speaking with PEOPLE ahead of the “Ladies of the ‘80s” auction with Julien’s Auctions, Gray talked about getting the role that changed her career
- Gray tells PEOPLE about parting with mementos from the Dallas days while still holding the memories from the series dear to her
Linda Gray never expected to end up on Dallas.
Catching up with PEOPLE as she teams up with Julien’s Auctions to bid farewell to items from her time playing Sue Ellen Ewing, as part of the auction house’s “Ladies of the ‘80s” auction, Gray opens up about getting the life-changing role.
Gray admits she didn’t think she had a chance, feeling a bad omen from the time she was set to audition.
“That was an interesting journey, but a wonderful one. I went in a casting room at Warner Bros. Studios at 5:00 on Friday afternoon, which is like death. You don’t go in for an interview at 5:00 on Friday afternoon. Everybody wants to go home, they’re not interested. They’re seeing another actor come in, and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, boring. I want out,’ ” she recalled.
“And there was no script! There was no reference to Sue Ellen Ewing. Who the heck was she? I came in kind of expecting a prior audition script so that I could come in prepared, and there was none. So my agent at that time said, ‘Well, just go in and they’ll just talk to you.’ ”
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What further perplexed Gray about the whole situation was that once Gray knew exactly what she was auditioning for, it sounded familiar to her. That was because her friend, Mary Frann, had told her about getting this very part.
“I already knew that my friend, Mary Frann, had the role. So I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ I had no idea,” she explained.
Gray went on with the audition, which had her reacting to Larry Hagman’s J.R. Ewing.
“The scene was taking place and I reacted — not happy, because he was a rat and a bad father — on and on and on. I felt I kind of already had a glimpse of who this J.R. character was, and so I reacted appropriately, so I thought. They said, ‘Okay, good job. Thank you for coming in,’ And I left,” she recalls.
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As she was leaving the building, she felt an “intuition” take over.
“I thought, ‘I have this job.’ I don’t know why I thought that. I thought I did an okay job. But I knew as I was pushing the elevator button leaving, and all the way while I was walking to my car, ‘I have this job.’ And I was worried about my friend, Mary Frann,” she continued.
Gray explains that because of her end-of-day, end-of-week interview, she knew she wouldn’t hear a word until that Monday.
“Monday morning, my agent called and said, ‘You got the job.’ And I was stunned because it all seemed very surreal. After walking into the room, I had no script in hand, nothing memorized, nothing. I thought, ‘How can I have gotten this job?’ But I got the job and I was thrilled, not happy that Mary Frann did not get the job, but anyway, I was thrilled that I got it. And that’s how it all started.”
Things worked out well for Frann . In 1982, she was cast as Joanna Loudon in CBS’s Newhart, which ran until 1990. For Gray, getting the job was the beginning of a truly cherished time in her career.
The actress remembers meeting her castmates at Warner Bros. in Burbank, California. The meeting brought the cast together in a small room on the lot for the first time.
“I looked at Larry Hagman, who came in with carved leather saddlebags like cowboys wear, and the front and the back of the saddlebags were filled with ice and a bottle of champagne in the front and in the back, and I thought, this is a strange character I can see. And so he was in the room, and we were introduced, and he said to me, ‘Hello, darling.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, he’s kind of charming,’ ” she recalls.
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“I remember I had a crush on him when he was doing I Dream of Jeannie, so I was kind of a little… Not shy, but I was a little like, ‘Oh my god, I’m standing in front of this man that I have a crush on.’ And so I was smiling sweetly,” she continued.
“And then, we went on to Patrick Duffy, and I thought, this is the Man from Atlantis with the webbed hands and swimming and all that. So, ‘Hello, Mr. Duffy.’ And then, we went on to Barbara Bel Geddes, and I thought, ‘Oh my god, she’s a fabulous, famous actor from Broadway.’ And I thought, ‘Oh dear, these are very, very big people.’ ”
“Then, I met Jim Davis, who I thought was absolutely wonderful because I’d seen his shows prior to meeting him. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, Jim Davis, he’s so handsome.’ And then, Ken Kercheval was charming, and Steve Kanaly was also charming. Charlene was this adorable charmer, and just 18. She was very short with very long, beautiful, blonde hair.”
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Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty
Seeing the cast together gave Gray a twinge of imposter syndrome, but instead of dwelling on it, she jumped right in with the talented peers she grew to love.
“I thought, ‘This is our cast? What a very odd, eclectic group of people. And what am I doing here? What am I doing in the room with these people?’ And so it all began,” she shared.
“It was the weirdest group of people I’d ever been in a room with — very eclectic, very charming, wonderful people that I was to spend a huge amount of my life with, and it couldn’t have been better.”
The online auction takes place on Wednesday, August 12th, at 10:00 AM PST live from Los Angeles, CA. Collectors can register & bid now and participate online in real-time at www.juliensauctions.com.
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