Behind the scenes, the second season of TNT’s Dallas was possibly the most trying in the franchise’s long history, as the actor who portrayed the show’s villain that everyone loved to hate, Larry Hagman, passed away during production. The well-loved Hagman was close with his many castmates, and possibly none of them were more close than Patrick Duffy and Linda Gray, who worked with him from the series’ very first episode which aired in 1978.
In many interviews following Hagman’s passing, Patrick and Linda often commented about how they felt Larry Hagman was still with them as they continued to work on the show as J.R.’s brother Bobby and ex-wife Sue Ellen, respectively. With that said, we caught up with Patrick Duffy himself at an event celebrating TNT’s 25th anniversary, to see what he thinks Larry Hagman would have thought of J.R. Ewing’s final brilliant masterpiece that capped off the second season of the series revival.
“He would have loved it!” he enthused. “I have no way of knowing that that’s true, other than I have a sense of the infallibility of my friendship with him, and that if I had died, and they did that, he would think it was the best idea, to have ‘Bobby’s Masterpiece.’ So it’s that sense of the respect that I have for our friendship, that I know he would have loved it,” Duffy explained.
The third season of the updated Dallas premieres in early 2014, and, as we did with showrunner/series developer Cynthia Cidre, we asked Duffy about the other son that Bobby Ewing has out there — Lucas, born in the 1986-1987 season of the series. Lucas was born from a relationship between Bobby and Jenna Wade which ended when Bobby returned to his beloved Pam. Ultimately, Jenna formed a bond with Bobby’s half-brother, Ray Krebbs (Steve Kanaly), who eventually married Jenna and adopted Lucas. While we’ve seen Ray on the new series, Bobby’s now-26-year-old biological son has not been mentioned. Might Lucas Krebbs show up on the new series?
“Somewhere in this crowd, unless she’s gone home already, is Cynthia Cidre. I have no idea,” Duffy admits. “My opinion is, I love the fact that the producers and Cynthia, specifically, have such a respect for the history of the show. So, if she thinks that it serves the show to introduce that character again, then it’s an option. She would never bring back a character or a concept as a stunt, unless it actually moved the story forward in a great way. And if that happens, she would do anything. That’s why I trust her explicitly. I am not a writer, and I am not a concept guy. I don’t pretend to be, and I don’t want to be,” he says.
Dallas Season 3 premieres in early 2014 on TNT. You can read some of our other Dallas coverage here! Stay tuned for Brenda Strong (Ann) and Emma Bell (Emma) here in the near future!
