The actress playing “burned Alexis”, Amy Sutherland, posted the following picture on Instagram.
Reading her posts & comments, she sure likes to make it look like she’s been cast as Nicollette’s official successor.
As
@Michael Torrance said, it might be easier to stretch the truth a bit when there isn't a lot of press coverage that will call her out for the exaggeration. I don't blame her for wanting to play along, esp. with photo accompaniments like that one. As a writer at TVLine suggested, the show might be having a few too many laughs at Alexis's expense, but I doubt this actress is saying/doing anything that the producers aren't OK with. I mean, if they
are supposedly considering her for a permanent recast, she certainly will not do anything Nathalie Kelley-esque in social media to screw up her chances. Her stuff seems more like producer-sanctioned misinformation.
I think i would absolutely love it, if Liz Gillies plays Alexis as well!
This is the sort of thing that might be funny as a last-second plot twist in an episode of something like
Twilight Zone or a short-term "dream season" type of nightmare
, but is not the kind of permanent change that can be maintained over time. It would simply undermine every scene Liz Gillies was in from then forward. This is why I highly doubt they'd try it. Once you make that serious of a change, it's pretty much set in stone and cannot be easily undone once the crush of criticism comes down on them. Think of it like the "Pam's Dream" plot twist on
Dallas, where the decision to use that twist STILL makes them a laughing stock after all these years. You can't just keep sending Alexis into plastic surgery to change her face like Romana trying on new regenerations in that episode of
Doctor Who.
When we watched the classic soaps we never knew who was going to leave or return. Why all these public statements? NS could have explained her reason afterwards if she wanted to.
Actually there was a certain amount of "spoilage" courtesy of leaks to the tabloids. Not only would they announce the departure(s) or arrival(s) of actors, they would often have the tabs leak plot info to help the shows in contract negotiations with the actors. People can drag the tabloids all they want, but I recall they had an excellent network of leakers in the production suites and spies on the sets to provide all the gossip and spoilers we could want. The only true "shockers" seemed to occur when the shows went to great trouble to keep a lid on the story--like filming multiple endings and not giving actors complete scripts. I'm guessing the Atlanta filming locale had something to do with NS's decision to announce her departure, since people would be seeing her in LA and wonder why she isn't at work. Since Nathalie Kelley had already left Atlanta for Australia (and the show had finished filming), OG Cristal's fate would have been much easier to keep secret since she had no real reason to be in Atlanta.