Lisa Grimaldi - Casting

Casting

As the World Turns creator and longtime head writer Irna Phillips created Lisa in the late 1950s originally as a short-term character. Lisa was kept on the As the World Turns canvas due to Fulton's day-to-day acting improvement. A Procter & Gamble executive said to Fulton six months into her run as Lisa, "I want to tell you what a wonderful job you are doing, because when you first came on the show we thought, 'We can't keep her. She's not very good.'"

Fulton's eagerness to play Lisa as a villainess contributed to the character's popularity and therefore its longevity. In a 2007 interview with the Archive of American Television, Fulton explained that the chararacter was originally written to be a "nice girl", which she did not find compelling as an actress, and that, while she read Phillips' lines exactly as they appeared on the script, she said them with a "scheming tone" in her voice. When Phillips saw Fulton's performance she said "I can write for that little rascal. She can play a bitch!" A scheming "vixen" in her early years, TIME magazine once referred to Lisa as a "superbitch" and the "most hated woman on TV." Since those days, Lisa has gone on to become a well-respected presence in Oakdale (the fictional town in which As the World Turns is set), often offering advice and support to the town's younger residents.

When the character of Lisa was introduced in 1960, the name "Lisa," which had only seen a popular resurgence in the previous ten years, was the sixth most popular baby name in the United States. Fulton's Lisa was credited with speeding up the popularity of the name for baby girls; "Lisa" became the most popular name for girls between the years of 1962 and 1969.

The character briefly crossed over into her own primetime spinoff series, Our Private World, for a few months in 1965, during which Lisa left Oakdale and moved to Chicago. She returned to Oakdale in 1966, where she has remained ever since.

Most notably, Pamela King filled in as Lisa during 1964 and Betsy von Furstenberg played the role from late 1983 to early 1984 during a contract dispute between Ms. Fulton and Procter & Gamble. On multiple occasions from 1991 to 1994, former movie actress Jane Powell replaced Ms. Fulton as Lisa and even soap veteran Maeve McGuire filled in during that same the time period as well. Australian actress Carmen Duncan, best known to US audiences for her role as Iris on Another World, filled in for Fulton for three episodes in late 2004 while she was on emergency medical leave.

In its final years, Fulton along with a number of other veteran actors were rarely seen on canvas. In a 2009 interview, Fulton was confused as to why the writers found it so difficult to write for older characters. "It could be an age thing, but one of my favorite soaps is the British series EastEnders. They have no problem with featuring older actors. And giving them romantic and dramatic storylines."