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[0:00] Lauren Van Hemert: Hi everyone, it is Lauren, and I am the host of the Beltline to Broadway podcast, and I am so glad you chose this episode to listen to. I'm talking to Kim Zimmer.

[0:19] Kim Zimmer: Grab a stick, get out of drink and step inside. Time for you to step into the Beltline.

[0:30] Kim Zimmer: This is the time to pop play and it's going your way. Time for you to step into the travel going out.

[0:34] Kim Zimmer: Time for you to step into the Beltline.

[0:55] Lauren Van Hemert: Have you ever returned to a place filled with so many significant memories that it triggers joy and heartbreak? I know I have.

[1:45] Lauren Van Hemert: Kim Zimmer, best known for her portrayal of Reva Shayne in Guiding Light, plays Harry Watts in this production, and she is as fabulous on stage as she is genuine and open-hearted offstage. Here's our conversation.

[2:02] Lauren Van Hemert: Last year you revealed that you had been diagnosed with breast cancer. I know fans are gonna want to know how you're doing, how you're feeling. How's it going?

[2:13] Kim Zimmer: I'm feeling great. I almost feel guilty about my recovery because it's been—I don't want to say it's been easy for me, but I did have such a strong support group, which I just wish on everyone who has to go through something like this, because that's really what's important. But I only had four rounds of chemo, and you know, it's rough, but it was four rounds and it was done. And then, so now all I'm waiting for is my breast tattoo from the breast that was removed. And I have an implant that I'm—they're supposed to tattoo me on April 19th.

[3:03] Lauren Van Hemert: Well, I'm glad to hear that you are feeling good, and I mean you look fabulous.

[3:10] Kim Zimmer: So I've put on a few pounds since chemo, so I'm not happy about that, but you know, it happens to the best of us, right?

[3:18] Lauren Van Hemert: It does. Getting a diagnosis like that, does that change how you approach your work? I mean, I feel like the people I know who have been diagnosed with cancer, it changes their outlook on life, work, family, everything.

[3:37] Kim Zimmer: Yeah, of course, when they say it's cancer, you think, okay, I'm gonna die. Now, what is my main—what's my first priority? But I have to say that my breast surgeon, who I—it was just—I don't see her enough anymore because I now see more of my plastic surgeon than I do my breast surgeon. But when I first went to her and she diagnosed that it would be best for me, she wasn't—she said it's up to you if you want a mastectomy, but if you do choose that as I—she said whatever you choose is your choice. And as I was leaving her office at first visit, she said to me, "You're gonna have to find something else to kill you because this isn't gonna kill you." And I just was like, you know, I walked out of the office and I was like—and laughing, laughing at the same time, you know?

Yeah, because it's scary. And then having to face my husband because, you know, that was after just my regular mammogram when they kept me there and they—I kept doing more and more tests and I had to drive home after just my regular mammogram and tell my husband that they found cancer. That was hard. And then the kids—oh forget about that.

[4:52] Kim Zimmer: I was gonna say, and the kids. Yeah, I feel like we as women have to talk about these things because we want people to get tested and we want people to go get early screenings and mammograms, and so thank you for sharing.

[5:09] Kim Zimmer: Yeah, because I'm a big proponent now of early—you know, get your mammograms, get it because whatever happens, you're getting it early. That was why I was so lucky because I caught it so early. You know, I mean, it was—I was lucky.

[5:27] Kim Zimmer: You know, having worked in the production department of As the World Turns, what I observed is soap opera people are the hardest working actors anywhere. How did your experience on the soap help you on film and other TV projects and on stage?

[5:49] Kim Zimmer: It didn't because compared to doing the soap, all that other stuff was easy. I hated doing guest spots on TV shows or movies of the week or whatever else I did because it was so boring. It was so—there was so much sitting around waiting to do, you know, six pages of dialogue. We do 40 to 60 pages of dialogue a day on a soap. Sometimes more. When I was doing the clone story, I was doing easily 60 pages of dialogue a day. So I wasn't a big fan of doing guest spots because it was too much sitting around. With the soap, you go, go, go. Theater, that's why I used to love comparing daytime with live theater, because you're rehearsing and you're rehearsing with an end in sight. You know, you're rehearsing for whatever, six, eight, twelve, however long you're rehearsing, then you get into production and performing, and then you get that gratification of performing in front of a live audience. And that was very close to doing a soap.

[6:56] Kim Zimmer: I'm really struck by Tamara Juni doing her new soap opera. Right. And maybe it gives—and Clifton Davis, daytime viewers a little bit of a, you know, a dream that some of these shows will come back. Any chance of a Guiding Light reboot, reunion, something?

[7:18] Kim Zimmer: Guiding Light was owned by a soap company, was owned by Procter and Gamble, you know, from working at S. Yeah. Yeah. And I just—I don't think Guiding Light—I don't think there is a chance of Guiding Light coming back. I think you're better finding—they found the NAACP that, you know, for Beyond the Gates. They found people that wanted to make this new soap opera. And they've done it. And I watch it, I'm kind of hooked on it. It's kind of exciting. Actually, I mean, I'm watching my little Carla Mosley just be—she's such a sweetheart and she's playing such a whacked out, you know, and I love watching her. And Clifton, I did Wicked with Clifton Davis. I was only at As the World Turns for a few months, but I loved it. I just loved the people. It was a lot of fun. And it was really thrilling to watch because I would sit in the lunchroom and watch on TV the filming of that day's episode. And it was like watching a play.

[8:28] Kim Zimmer: That's what I'm talking about. It was really exciting in the old days when you didn't film everything per set. When I was on The Doctors, you were doing a scene, and if you didn't have the last line, your camera was moving to the next set because they would just count down commercial slugs like 30 seconds, 60 seconds, and that was—that was it. You know, you didn't—it was a live—it was live, it wasn't live. I mean, you could stop if you had to, but basically it was a play.

[8:56] Kim Zimmer: It was a play. I think one thing that might surprise fans is the amount of theater work you've done and musicals, including the first national tour of Wicked as Madame Morrible. Does it surprise you that 10 plus years after that tour that we're still talking about this show and that it's become this phenomenon?

[9:31] Kim Zimmer: Well, no, because you've had other shows, you know, you have Phantom of the Opera, you have Chicago, you have Mousetrap in London that's been running for—the play that goes wrong.

[9:31] Kim Zimmer: The play that goes wrong, yeah. I mean, it's not unusual. I think what I—when I was cast in Wicked, they gave me a ticket to go and see the show on Broadway. Um, and I was fascinated by the fact that when I went out at intermission, nobody was speaking English.

[10:03] Kim Zimmer: They were all like tourists, you know, from everywhere, every nationality, every accent you could imagine in the lobby, people just wanting to see the spectacle on Broadway. You know, I mean it was fascinating. And I think the other thing that's fascinating about a show like Wicked and a show like Guiding Light is the fandom.

[10:30] Lauren Van Hemert: Oh, yeah. The fandom is, I mean, in your 20 plus years there, what have you seen to be the evolution of fandom?

[10:43] Kim Zimmer: Oh, I have so many precious moments of fandom. One of them happened here in the South where I would come to charity golf events here in North Carolina and I would have four or five people standing in front of me that the whole family were, you know, like the great-great-granddaughter, the granddaughter, the daughter, the mother, the grandmother, the great-grand, you know, five generations of viewers and so many people sharing with me the stories of having their grandmother, their mother was a working mother, and so they would come home from school with their grandmother and watch Guiding Light. You know, I met so many rappers. Our studio was in the same studio as BET, and I met so many rappers in the elevators because we shared an elevator that would be like, "Oh my God, I can't believe it's Reva Shayne!"

Stevie Wonder. I mean, just so many wonderful encounters and athletes who are in hotel rooms all day waiting to play their games in the evening or late afternoon or whatever would watch the soaps, and I would meet athletes that were fans. I mean, it's just a universal thing. I feel like, especially if you inherit the love from your mother, your grandmother, you know, and it becomes a together thing.

[12:20] Lauren Van Hemert: Yeah, yeah. We didn't have screens back then and all the media we have now. We just, you know, you can watch TV.

[12:30] Kim Zimmer: Yeah. And I will tell one story about my own mother. I did several other soaps before I did Guiding Light, and she was a CBS fan. She did all of her work in front of the TV, you know, ironing or whatever, from Love of Life or whatever. She watched the whole CBS lineup. And I hadn't arrived in my career until I finally was cast on Guiding Light because in those days you had to change the channel, you know, and there was no way to record shows. So she didn't want to miss her stories to turn the channel and watch me on One Life to Live or on The Doctors or whatever I was doing. But when I finally got cast on Guiding Light, she was like, "You've arrived."

[13:17] Lauren Van Hemert: I love that. You know, the thing about Wicked, and I'm a huge Wizard of Oz fan, is this sense of home. And that is something that really struck me in The Trip to Bountiful. And I know Eric, he wrote me this morning and he said, you know, we talked about the Wizard of Oz during rehearsals and the parallels between The Trip to Bountiful and Oz. So can you talk to me about those parallels? Because I think people are picking up on it.

[13:53] Kim Zimmer: Yeah, I, you know, as an actor in this production, I have been so, and yes, we did talk about parallels, but to me, that's fantasy. Wicked, Wizard of Oz, even though it's touching and it's lovely and everything, The Trip to Bountiful is reality for so many people. You know, now that we have so many experiences with Alzheimer's and dementia and losing our parents, our mothers, you know, in a world that isn't real for them anymore. This became my focus was to make this as real, The Trip to Bountiful, as important and as real for me to project that to an audience member, you know, that it's not fantasy. We've all been touched in some way by someone who just wants to be home, you know.

[14:59] Kim Zimmer: I think Carrie Watts is such a beautifully written character. I love this character so much, and so many fabulous actresses. Geraldine Page, I think, won the Academy Award for this role. What has playing this part taught you as far as learning from her, just experiencing life through her eyes, through the words of Horton Foote, who I would love to know more about? I would love to know who he based this character off of. I haven't really researched that to find out if he knew a Carrie Watts or because the writing is so beautiful.

[15:44] Kim Zimmer: I saw the notebook on Broadway. I saw Hell's Kitchen, amazing, Keisha Luce. I feel like for such a long time, there just weren't roles for women of my age and older. And so now I'm loving seeing these older actresses have these moments and these incredible roles. And I hope, you know, I love this character so much. I just hope there are more characters written like this because it's really fun to watch. I did a play last summer at Theater Workshop of Nantucket called Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks. And it's about an older woman who lives in a retirement community, and she hires a young gentleman to come and teach her six dance lessons in six weeks, six ballroom dances, tango, you know, and that was another really touching, it was another two-hander, you know, two-character play, and just their relationship for, you know, 90 minutes, and each little vignette ended with them doing a little bit of one of the ballroom dances, and that was, I mean, these plays are out there, you just have to dig really deep to find them.

[17:15] Lauren Van Hemert: Yeah. You've done so much regional theater. We just talked about, I think everybody's kind of like got their eye on Broadway all the time. But regional theaters like Theatre Raleigh are just doing incredible, incredible work and bringing incredible talent to local communities. Talk about for a second, just the importance of regional theaters in this country.

[17:40] Kim Zimmer: It is regional. I mean, only so many people can work on Broadway. You know, I mean, that's a tough go. And Broadway as an actor has gotten very expensive to do as well because your commute, if you live, if you have a family, you're having to commute into the city. That's why I am, I love, that's why I went on tour with Wicked for almost two years. Going into cities that you know or you don't know, and living in that city and experiencing the local talent that's available to surround you on a stage to support you as the star or however you're being represented is worth its weight in gold to me. And I think the audiences, the local people are very proud of this theater. You know, they love what's happening at this theater.

[18:45] Lauren Van Hemert: What do you hope that people will get out of seeing The Trip to Bountiful and you and this production?

[18:52] Kim Zimmer: I guess what I would want to have portrayed is take care of our elderly people, you know, embrace them. You know, yes, they're kooky and they're annoying, but we need to take great care of them. As a longtime fan of Guiding Light, I can't tell you how much this conversation meant to me and how grateful I am to Theatre Raleigh and Eric Woodall for making this happen. The Trip to Bountiful runs through April 6th. I'll put a link to Theatre Raleigh's website in the episode notes. If you like what you've heard on this episode, subscribe to the podcast. Follow us on social media on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok at Beltline to Broadway, or check us out online at www.beltline to broadway.org. Until next time, I'll see you at the theater.