Linda Gray has almost nothing but admiration for her late Dallas co-star Larry Hagman, who played her ruthless oil baron husband, JR Ewing, on the wildly popular Eighties soap opera.
The only problem was when her character, Sue Ellen, had to kiss JR.
"He did not like the kissing scenes," Linda tells HELLO! in an exclusive interview. "I could tell that he cringed when we had to do the most sensitive scenes.
"He would do pranks. He would either eat peanut butter before the kissing scenes, or onions. It was tough because I would have to not laugh and continue the kissing, while wanting to kill him at the same time. I think he did it on purpose to rattle me. It was a typical JR Ewing trick, and there was nothing I could do about it except beat him up after the scene."
Linda laughs as she recalls the outrageous storylines on the show that was her career breakthrough at the age of 37. At its peak in 1980, it commanded the attention of 300 million viewers worldwide and 21.6 million in the UK. She appeared in 12 of the 14 seasons in its original run (1978 to 1991) and all three seasons of its reboot in the 2010s.
Dallas featured perhaps the most preposterous plotline of any American drama when its producers wanted to reinstate a popular character who was indisputably dead. Bobby Ewing, played by Patrick Duffy, was shown being run over by a car, going into cardiac arrest in hospital and being interred in a coffin. He reappeared after a gap of one season, washing himself in a shower, prompting his shocked wife to later explain that she had woken from an extremely detailed dream.
Linda recalls that "there were a lot of eye rolls on the set" when that happened.
"We would be in the make-up trailer and say: 'What? What are we doing? Why?' There was a lot of humour on the set [and] we realised that was our job. We all just said: 'OK, that's who we are, roll the camera!'"
Linda is now 85 and living in Palm Springs, California, where she posed for an exclusive photoshoot at her luxurious condominium overlooking a golf course and duck pond.
© Jonas Mohr for HelloBrush with royalty
Despite her upbringing in Los Angeles County, she is an Anglophile and reveals that she had a brush with royalty in 2001 during her West End appearance as Mrs Robinson in the stage adaptation of The Graduate.
She was invited to a party hosted by her friend Lord Black, then head of the Press Complaints Commission, and his partner, Mark Bolland, then a press advisor to the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles, now the King and Queen.
"I was talking to somebody and I received a tap on the shoulder. I turned around and there was Camilla and that was kind of a surprise," Linda says. "I think I was inappropriate because I said, 'Oh hello, Camilla!'
"I thought that was faux pas number one."
It would be another four years before Camilla became the Duchess of Cornwall and HRH after her marriage to Charles, so Linda's greeting was correct.
"She was so lovely. We had a nice chat. I was so impressed by her."
© Jonas MohrLoving the British
Her role as Mrs Robinson was apt: in the poster for the 1967 film starring Anne Bancroft as the older woman who seduces the title character, played by Dustin Hoffman, it was Linda's stockinged leg in the foreground. Anne had been unavailable for the shoot, so Linda stood in for a fee of $25.
Her visits to London, which also included a turn as the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella in 2014, gave her a love of the British.
"I love the people. I felt welcome. You're all creative and smart and you have a great sense of literature and theatre."
She is grateful for having been part of the cultural phenomenon of Dallas, although it didn't feel like that at the time.
"When you're in the midst of it, you have no idea what is happening. It's like, ‘What is all this fuss about?’"
She says that there were seldom any clashes of egos on the set, although her friend Larry Hagman, who died in 2012, was born with a "magical ego".
"He was his own egocentric person, and we loved him for that." Was he close to his screen persona? "Very close. He wasn't as bad or as conniving as JR Ewing, but he had that kind of swagger and that attitude that was very much [JR's character]."
© Jonas MohrTrick for portraying an alcoholic
Sue Ellen was an alcoholic, which Linda wanted to portray with subtlety.
"I had seen many women play alcoholics, and I thought they went overboard. I thought it was too sloppy. I wanted to have Sue Ellen be real even though it was uncomfortable for a lot of people."
She developed a simple trick to help her. "I would focus on something and cross my eyes just a little tiny bit – not crazy or cartoonish. When you do that, things are out of focus. You can't just reach for a glass of wine. You have to slow down the motion."
Family life
Her success as an actress in Dallas led to the end of her 21-year marriage to the art director Ed Thrasher, who wanted her to stay at home at their California ranch until their children were at university.
"I didn't look at it as a failure," she says. "It just had come to an end. Other people were really tough on me and they said, 'How could you leave this wonderful man?' It was really hard because I was the victim of all this."
She treasured the "beautiful marriage" and the two children who came from it.
"There was no hatred, no huge arguments. My children and I were at his deathbed. We were there when he died [in 2006]. There was always love there."
She never remarried and is currently single. Would she like to meet a new partner?
"Oh, I think that would be lovely, but you know, sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't."
Would she go on Tinder?
"Not a dating app! Good God, no! If somebody comes along, perfect, but I'm not out looking. I mean, I'm 85 years old and life is wonderful. I have many friends, and that's it.
© Jonas MohrShe has a close relationship with her daughter, Kehly Sloane, 60, who works for the ice hockey team Los Angeles Kings, but had to watch her son, Jeff Thrasher, a documentary maker, suffer with leukemia; he died in 2020 at the age of 56.
"It's something you never come to terms with. He never leaves your heart. I was the one that brought him onto the earth and that never goes away. You just remember nurturing him during pregnancy and loving him the minute they put him on my lap in my arms. He was this living, breathing, adorable human being that my husband and I created, and all of a sudden he's gone. As the mother, you brought them on the planet and then you escorted them out, and that's devastating."
She cherishes her memories of him as a child "filled with love and life and humour" and watching him grow.
"To be taken away with this stupid disease was heartbreaking. I feel him in a room. I'll see a picture of him and it brings back all those memories."
His absence was part of the reason she left the family ranch after 50 years, where she lived alongside a menagerie of animals including horses, chickens, dogs, cats, a pig and a goat.
"Because of my son passing, all of a sudden I was alone in this big house on three acres of land, and the animals were slowly dying. I thought, what am I doing here?"
Kehly suggested that a new home would help her to move on "away from the memories of seeing my son every day out there, riding his bicycle and all that".
Move to Palm Springs
Linda had misgivings about her new condominium at first, thinking that she didn't want to be in the California desert, but told herself to "be quiet and don't talk". She now loves seeing the ducks on the pond outside her window and friends driving past on golf carts and feels "a sense of serenity and peace that I haven't had in a long time".
The serenity is occasionally punctured when she is visited by Kehly's children, Ryder, 32, a photographer, and Jack, 22, who stay with her in April for the Coachella festival.
She says she could not be more proud of her grandsons, despite the chaos they bring.
"There's clothes and shoes and stuff all over the house. It looks like a train wreck. It is awful. I just laugh and don't even look at it. Every bed is filled. They get home at like 3am or 4am, and the rule is: whatever time you get home, do not wake up your grandmother.
"The next rule is: when am I going to wake you up? I got up to make breakfast and I was not quiet. Those are the joys of being a grandmother."
