Alexis Colby - Behind The Scenes

Behind The Scenes

Candidates for the plum role of Blake Carrington's ex-wife, initially named Madeleine, included film legend Sophia Loren. Series co-creator Esther Shapiro later claimed that the character of Alexis was based on the Roman empress Livia, as characterized in the 1934 novel I, Claudius. A change in the writing and the addition of Alexis were credited with lifting Dynasty in the ratings, and the character "quickly set off a host of female imitators in other prime-time soaps." Producer E. Duke Vincent said of Collins in 2005, "Joan Collins is the queen of the archetype … How do you get that? You get it in the storytelling, obviously, but the actress herself, her personality, brought something to that role which I don't think anybody else could have done." Executive Producer Aaron Spelling added, "We didn't write Joan Collins. She played Joan Collins … We wrote a character, but the character could have been played by 50 people and 49 of them would have failed. She made it work."

Alexis' annual catfights with Linda Evans' Krystle became eagerly anticipated, and Alexis would later have similar brawls with Dominique Deveraux (Diahann Carroll) and Sable Colby (Stephanie Beacham).

Alexis was conspicuously absent from the Season Six opener which followed the infamous Moldavian Massacre cliffhanger; Collins was in a tense contract renegotiation with the show, seeking an increased salary. As a result, the first episode of the season had to be rewritten to explain her absence. Collins' demands were met (she reportedly signed a $60,000 per episode contract) and she returned to the series in the season's second episode.

As Dynasty declined in ratings in later seasons, Collins was contracted for only 13 of the 22 episodes in the series' ninth season as a money-saving move (by this time, Collins was bringing in $120,000 an episode). She later announced that she would not return for a tenth season but the series was cancelled at the end of the ninth season due to low ratings anyway. The majority of the cast (including Collins) reunited for the two-part, four-hour miniseries Dynasty: The Reunion in 1991.