Kellie Martin On Getting Killed on "ER"
by Joel Keller
posted Jul 9th 2010


The last thing a lot of people saw you in is "ER" and obviously the last time we saw you there you were bleeding quite profusely.

Looking back, were you surprised that they killed Lucy off, and how they did it? Do people still come up to you and say, "Lucy got screwed?"

People were really disturbed by it I think. It was really hard for me to watch because the show is that good that even though I actually filmed it I was still shocked by the final product. I was actually honored to be going out in such a big way.



I thought it was really cool and "ER" was a tough experience for me because we had a family tragedy a week before I started working on that show so that show was always really tainted.

So I had trouble just having fun on that show because of my state of mind. So really leaving was a good thing for me. I needed to leave because I needed to move on and that show would always remind me of a bad time in my life.



So I was really happy to go, I mean happy is probably the wrong word, but now I'm glad in retrospect and I love that it was such a big deal and that is shocked people and still to this day, people say "I couldn't watch "ER" after that." or "That disturbed me so much, I'm happy to see you alive.'

As an actor, that's awesome to be able to touch people like that.





Considering your last scene was a sheet being pulled over you.

I know! It was awful.

http://www.tvsquad.com/2010/07/09/kellie-martin-on-drop-dead-diva-the-jensen-project-and-gett/

Thanks for sharing that article!! Yes, Kellie's sister Heather died from lupus in 1998 - and from everything I've read over the years, being in even a fictional hospital setting was hard for her.

I'm happy that Kellie seems to be flourishing in both her professional and personal lives. My favorite role of hers was of the title heroine in CBS' short-lived drama Christy (1994-95), based on Catherine Marshall's novel. Before that, I'd loved her as Becca on Life Goes On and as one of the "Wilderness Girls" in Shelley Long's movie Troop Beverly Hills. :cool: :D

^ Did you also like the subsequent "Christy" tv-specials? I heard in the early 2000s they did a couple of tv-movies.

I never watched them - they recast nearly the entire cast and changed even more things around from the book (on the original TV series they hired former soap opera writer Pamela Long - who then proceeded to bring a dead character back to life just like on the soaps). It was all downhill from there.

Actually, I prefer the book to the TV series, story-wise. The show had EXCELLENT production values (filmed entirely on location in Townsend, TN, near where the real-life story the book was based on took place) and terrific actors. Whenever I read the Christy book (which has been at least a zillion since I first read it in 1994), I picture Kellie Martin. To me, she WAS Christy - and still is!

To me, the best part of the book AND TV show was Christy's complex and electric relationship with the community's doctor, Neil MacNeill (Stewart Finlay-McClennan):

Now I remembered where I knew Kellie Martin from...

She did a 1994 tv movie called A Friend to Die For aka Death of a Cheerleader with Tori Spelling. It was based on a true story in the 1980s on a jealous girl who murdered her classmate (Martin killed Spelling).

I taped that movie when it originally aired on NBC back in 1994 (and still have it around somewhere)!!! :D

I like Kellie Martin, I've seen her in a few things over the years... I remember that Cheerleader movie when it came out, and I also remember her doing a movie called "The Face On The Milk Carton", in which she played a teenager who suspects that she was kidnapped as a young child and raised by her kidnappers (which turns out to be true). That movie was based on a novel series.

Around 2005, and for a couple of years, she was in a series of TV Movies on Hallmark...her series was called "Mystery Woman" and she played a book store owner who gets involved in solving real life mysteries. Hallmark had several of those series going, including one with John Larroquette ("McBride") and another series with Lea Thompson ("Jane Doe")... Dick van Dyke also starred in a few of his own movies, but imo they weren't as good as the other ones. Unfortunately, Hallmark only made a few movies of each character and then discontinued these series (although they re-ran them forever).

And I remember my wife watching the "Christy" series when it was on. I didn't know that Martin played the lead character.

I never have watched any of the TV shows she was in on any kind of a regular basis, but I like her a lot.

I found this old article from 1995 and found it interesting enough to share, so here it is!

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/newsday/access/20489227.html?dids=20489227:20489227&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=May+24%2C+1995&author=Diane+Werts&pub=Newsday+(Combined+editions)&desc=GLUED+TO+THE+TUBE+The+Face+in+the+Telepic+Kellie+Martin+is+the+new+princess+of+TV+movies&pqatl=google

Newsday - Long Island, N.Y.
May 24, 1995
By Diane Werts

IT'S OFFICIAL!

Kellie Martin has now succeeded the late Elizabeth Montgomery, Lindsay Wagner, Patty Duke, Jaclyn Smith, Valerie Bertinelli, Meredith Baxter and Melissa Gilbert.

She is now the new Queen of the TV Movies.

You know how there always is one - a female tube star who, each new season, seems to pop up on every other telepic title. Even TV-friendly guys like Richard Crenna, Martin Sheen, Peter Strauss, Brian Dennehy, Richard Thomas and Robert Urich have nothing on these dames when it comes to satellite star power and all-around audience draw. Maybe male actors rule movie theaters, but women are the definite winners at home.

What's really odd this time, though, is that Martin ostensibly left the game after ABC's "Life Goes On" (and her four seasons as Becca) to attend Yale, Jodie Foster-style - yet she's suddenly ubiquitous in tubeland. First helming her own show in CBS' "Christy." Then topping the telepic ratings last fall with NBC's "A Friend to Die For," where it originally seemed co-star Tori Spelling was the draw. But no. Because here's Martin coming on strong twice in this May sweeps, with NBC's May 1 flick "If Someone Had Known" and now over on CBS tonight at 9 with "The Face on the Milk Carton."

Make no mistake. The last two are Martin vehicles, and nothing but - our long-suffering Becca grabbing the spotlight for her own self now. After offing Spelling last fall, she killed her abusive husband in "If Someone", and powers the season's most wrenching family drama tomorrow night as a high schooler who realizes the missing-kid photo she spots in the cafeteria is actually herself 13 years earlier.

"The Face on the Milk Carton" epitomizes the kind of emotion-drenched TV-movie that polarizes the viewing public. Either you immediately think the basic concept is the most irresistible hook in the world; or, sensing what kind of weeper you're in for, you flee as fast as possible.

That would be your loss, though, because "Face" does very well what TV movies do best: tap into the most primal of personal dilemmas. They especially deal with the family in ways that feature films have unfortunately nearly given up attempting. (Just ask "My Family/Mi Familia" about the box-office prospects in that.) "Face" raises the most basic question of all: What is family? Is it the folks who bore you? The folks who raised you? What makes a mom or dad or sister or brother?

And this movie, based on two young-reader novels by Caroline B. Cooney, offers a most clever set-up. There are no villains among the competing sets of parents, just people who each want the best for the girl they consider "theirs" - and a very confused girl who also wants the best for all of them, almost to the point of tearing herself apart.

There's enough mystery in the first half to keep you glued. What's with those older parents (Jill Clayburgh and Edward Herrmann) and their furtive glances whenever daughter Janie asks after her birth certificate? They seem so swell. Could they be kidnappers? And what's Janie to do about it, even if they were? Does she really want to know the truth - or would it only make things more tortured?

The latter is the inevitable answer, of course, delivering a second half teeming with mixed feelings, legal wrangles, family rivalries, internal wrestling matches over the meaning of home, and more over-the-top emotional wallows than you'd think one hour could hold. It's not giving anything away to say that finding her "real" parents doesn't solve anything for Janie, or Jenny, or whoever she's going to decide she needs to be.

The final half-hour provides a world-class crying jag for all concerned, but the feelings in "The Face on the Milk Carton" are genuine and intense, and they need their outlet. The film (scripted by Nancy Isaak and directed by Waris Hussein) lets everybody air their fears and resentments, giving rare equal weight not only to Janie's conflicts but to those of her lifelong parents, her birth parents (Richard Masur and "NYPD Blue"'s Sharon Lawrence), and even her newly discovered siblings.

And these folks do it the old-fashioned way - by themselves. There's nary a therapist in sight. Just people relying on love, faith, the truth and each other - and as executive producer Dorothea Petrie ("Foxfire", "Caroline?") points out in a letter to reviewers, on "the awareness that a child's needs must come first, and that true love and understanding makes this possible".

But none of this noble and pathos-laden melodrama would work without Kellie Martin in the middle, believably anchoring the suds with her middle-American sturdiness, those big blue eyes, that cherubic face. Like recent TV-movie throne holder Melissa Gilbert, this 19-year-old seems to be simultaneously a vulnerable child and an incipient woman, staddling the chasm by keeping both feet on the ground and her eyes open.

And her mind in gear. If nothing else, the TV-movie queens of the past 25 years share a lively sense of nimble alertness. The most durable among them (like Montgomery, whose teleflicks ranged from 1972's "The Victim" to "Deadline for Murder" two weeks ago on CBS) have often been the least classically beautiful, distinctive or "star"-like. Victoria Principal is about as exotic as they get. These queens reign with their brains and their next-door-neighbor relatability.

But how long will Martin hold title? She swears she's actually attending Yale; CBS says the first-semester freshman filmed "Face on the Milk Carton" over spring break, during which time she also wrote two papers (an analysis of "Ethan Frome" for literature class and a study of domestic violence's impact on children for psychology). That wouldn't leave much time for TV-movie making over the next four years.

Better watch out, Kellie. Those Olsen twins are free of "Full House" now and growing up fast. And there's two of them.

Kellie as Dr. Lucy Knight:

But wait, there's more!!

^ Did you also like the subsequent "Christy" tv-specials? I heard in the early 2000s they did a couple of tv-movies.

Update - I finally did see them. I checked them out of the library. I wasn't very impressed. Obviously, if Kellie Martin had come back to play Christy, things would've been a lot better, but it was her choice not to reprise the role. :(

Kellie Martin's Lucy was one of my favorite characters on ER, her death I think was one of the more powerful episodes.

I enjoyed the Mystery Woman TV movies that she did on Hallmark.

Kellie Martin's Lucy was one of my favorite characters on ER, her death I think was one of the more powerful episodes.

And MEMORABLE. KM may not have been on ER very long in the grand scheme of things (a season and a half, I think), but she certainly left with a bang!

And MEMORABLE. KM may not have been on ER very long in the grand scheme of things (a season and a half, I think), but she certainly left with a bang!

Definitely!

This episode was very reminiscent of Kellie Martin’s key “ER” episode (http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2014/03/why-good-wife-making-us-watch-er-morning/359473/) from 14 years ago.
Read more at http://www.hitfix.com/tv-tattle#FmrzfW8LxrcrqbSV.99