'Dynasty,' One More Time

Cast Of '80s Prime-Time Soap Reflects; Set For Reunion Special

(CBS) 

Fans aren't the only ones who enjoyed watching the catfights. Cast members would often show up on the set, even when they weren't working, just to watch the wild scenes.

For Evans, the thrill wasn't so much the fighting, but as the glamour: "It was a woman's fantasy, to be able to choose anything she wants to wear, and to have women come up to me on the street and say, 'Oh, I love that outfit, where'd you get that, and I'm gonna have some something made like that.' It was extraordinary."

Fashion mixed with melodrama. Catherine Oxenberg played Amanda, described by Kauffman as another Carrington wild child.

"One day," Oxenberg remembered, "I'd be in love with a person. Then the next day, I would hate that person; then the next day, I would have an affair with my mother's husband, then I'd be committing suicide."

Remember, Kauffman marveled, this was decades before "Desperate Housewives"!

"Dynasty" was one of the first network prime-time shows with a gay character: the Carrington son, Steven.

"At the time," Kauffman asked Al Corley, who played Steven, "did you realize you were trailblazing, breaking barriers?"

"There would be no 'Brokeback Mountain' without Steven Carrington, so they say," replied Corley.

Of course, Kauffman says, his lover would be murdered by his father, just another plot twist in the outrageous adventures of the fabulously wealthy and wacky Carringtons.

"We had tremendous chemistry," Collins put it simply.

"Was this the character of a career?" Kauffman wanted to know.

"Absolutely," said Collins. "I mean, to get a part like Alexis, which is so juicy and so wonderful."

"It's a holiday," Thomson laughed. "Take a lovely trip with wonderful-looking, screwed-up rich people."