When the second season of TNT’s Dallas premieres on Monday night, January 28, the character who might be the most changed from last year is Julie Gonzalo’s character.
Last year when we first met her, she was “Rebecca Sutter,” fiancee to Jesse Metcalfe’s Christopher Ewing. As the season progressed, we learned there was a lot more to her; and, ultimately, in the first season finale, she was revealed to actually be Pamela Rebecca Barnes, daughter of Ewing nemesis Cliff Barnes.
The “real” Pamela makes her presence known fairly early into Season 2, but in a phone interview done yesterday, Gonzalo tells us that not everything about “Rebecca” was unreal.
“In the first season, she really was in love with Christopher. She really did fall for him,” she confirms. “I think that as her true character’s being revealed, you can sense that there’s a child-like behavior in her. She really did fall in love. As an actor, I can relate to that. I can relate to falling in love; I can relate to a lot of things, but truly, I don’t have anything in common with Pamela this year, to be honest with you,” she continues.
“I think that you get to find out a lot of why she does what she does. She’s coming from a very honest place. I don’t find her to a mean-spirited person. I don’t find her to be a villain in any sense of the word. I think that she’s really trying to make her father happy, a lot like John Ross and his character. He’s truly trying to please his father, and do the things that you were programmed to do in a way, since she was a little girl. Obviously I have a very different upbringing than Pamela did, but as an actor, that’s the fun part for me. I get to explore that, and I get to go to different levels that I’ve never been in, and this is great,” 
she says. “What I loved about playing last season and this year is the fact that there is a level of vulnerability, and there is a level of a child inside of her, and yet, she’s still going along with the things she has to do.”
Exploring new sides of the character should be enjoyable for both the audience and the actress playing her. “I think it’s going to be fun to discover the real Pamela this year,” Julie says.
The second season of Dallas does have some sadness on the production side, as Larry Hagman (J.R.) passed away during the production of the new season. “It’s sad. It’s still sad. We still talk about him on a daily basis,” Gonzalo says.
“In a way, it really united us, and by us, I mean, the crew, and the cast, and everybody involved in he production. It just made everybody more eager to work, and there’s this level of wanting to do the best we possibly can for him. Our motto became ‘let’s do it for Larry.’ It’s a beautiful thing, that we get to unite and really honor such a legendary icon and person, on and off screen,” she says.
“I was blessed to be in his presence, and to have spoken to him, and to have had encounters with him, and to have traveled with him. We cherish those moments. It’s still sad; it’s still a little weird at times, but he would have wanted to continue on,” she recalls.
The second season of Dallas premieres with two back to back episodes on Monday, January 28. Come back to KSiteTV soon for more Dallas interviews and coverage!
