Penny Hughes (As The World Turns) - Casting

Casting

Rosemary Prinz originated the role of Penny in the first episode of As the World Turns. Prinz recalled the on-set tension with the show's creator Irna Phillips, who had fired the show's leading cast member Helen Wagner six months into the show because she didn't like the way she poured coffee. "Irna did not like my going out and doing plays," she recalled, "I was twenty-five when I was hired to play Penny. I thought I was going to stay five years at the most. I stayed for twelve. I did the twelve because I still needed to pay for my analysis. After those twelve years, analysis made me as uncrazy as I was going to or wanted to be." Prinz claimed she would often deal Phillips threats back stage. "I would tell I was going to get pregnant." A focal point of Penny's angst was her inability to have children. "I would constantly have to tell Irna that I was Rosemary, not Penny. Penny was a character."

Prinz told the New York Post in December 2009 that they recast Penny, however that actress only lasted 13-weeks due to enormous "uproar". Prinz also wanted the show to deal with the death of the country's president John F. Kennedy in 1963. "When Kennedy died, there was four days of complete television coverage, Friday to Monday, and it was just — the nation was in this deep mourning. It was just 9/11, for four days. And when we got back on Tuesday, I said, “We can’t just have a scene without mentioning what we’ve all been through." "They said, 'Oh, no, we can’t do that. Just do the script.' So I started a scene with Grandpa, and of course it’s live, what are they going to do? So I said, 'Grandpa, here we are talking about Tommy, and after all the country’s been through for the last four days.' I got in what I had to say. And then they all rushed down from the control room and I said, 'Oh God, I just said the first thing that came into my head!'" "Irna got even with me in the end. I couldn’t wait for my contract to be over — I paid the analyst, I got un-crazy and I didn’t want to do the show anymore. And so Irna had me steal my brother’s child and go off to England. So this heroine is suddenly doing this terrible thing." "I was supposed to be this monument of goodness."