A year after wrapping up her run as 90210’s Naomi Clark, AnnaLynne McCord joined the TNT remake of Dallas in 2014 and found herself in a variety of new situations. “It was the first time that I was playing a nice character from the onset,” she begins. “Obviously, Naomi had her charm, but she was written as the mean girl, and I played my share of mean girls, vixens, villainous types. But with my character on Dallas, I got to play this young, single mom who’s dealing with a situation with an abusive partner and she’s a tough little chick who has a bunch of brothers and works for Southfork and kind of keeps to herself but falls in love with Christopher, Jesse’s [Metcalfe] character and it was so much fun.”
McCord counts the gig as one of her favorites, mainly for the extracurricular activities involved with the production. “I love riding horses, and it’s been something that I’ve gotten to learn through my job,” she explains. “I did not have the luxury prior to work, but I’ve been given these wonderful moments where I get to learn cool skills as an actress. This was the most that I got to experience because we were taken about 50 miles out to these big ranches where they taught everyone, and we just got to canter and ride freely on the horses as much as we wanted. And that was so much fun.”
Skip Bolen / © TNT / Courtesy: Everett Collection
Though the Ewings provided fireworks aplenty, “The drama on Dallas was more off-screen than on-screen,” McCord dishes. “It was the most hysterical thing there. I was this guest star and was like, ‘Why is everybody confiding in me, all their dramas?’ I was literally like, ‘I need to get away, I’m just gonna sit in my car and have lunch in the dark,’ because our lunch was in the middle of the night because we were doing a night shoot.
She continues, “So, it was, like, 8 p.m. and one of the actors just comes and opens the door to my character’s car and gets in. He starts talking to me about whether or not he should marry his fiancée and all this stuff. And I was like, ‘I don’t think I am qualified to be giving you advice. I don’t know your life, you know?’ It was really interesting.”
The series wrapped after the third year, but McCord feels it may have been premature. “The season I was on was the last season there was, but I was like, ‘They should just start taking some of the storylines off camera and putting them into the show,’ ” she muses. “I think a lot of shows have that.”
Dallas, Seasons 1-3, Streaming, Tubi