'She seems to be one thing and is quite another,' Mills said of her character. Mills, who plays Tabitha Lennox - 'everybody's next-door neighbor' - was in her dressing room, poring over her lines Huber, who co-stars as the well-educated, independent and romantic Gwen Hotchkiss, was in the makeup room, her hair in rollers. Neither actress has appeared in soaps before.

Huber, 23, graduated in communications from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and studied drama in New York City.

She has spent the past few decades in the United States, appearing opposite Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder's 'Avanti,' in the TV series 'Nanny and the Professor' and in theater productions with husband Maxwell Caulfield. Mills, 57, first came to films as a 10-month-old in 'In Which We Serve,' the wartime flag-waver by Noel Coward, who was her godfather. Of the cast of 22, two are carrying on family legacies: Juliet Mills, daughter of John Mills and sister of Hayley and Liza Huber, daughter of Susan Lucci, longtime Emmy daytime loser who finally won this year for 'All My Children.' Reilly, the soap guru who pushed 'Days of Our Lives' to the top of the ratings with his outrageous plots, applied his talents to 'Passions.' He has called the show ' 'Peyton Place' meets 'Dark Shadows' meets 'The X-Files.' ' Fasten your seat belts.Īt Studio Center, 'Passions' occupies Stages 4 and 5, which are crammed with sets - a carnival, a hospital office and sick room, a cafe, a wooded area, an apartment, plus the town's leading family's mansion, including the kitchen, a room that apparently has been missing from soap operas in recent years. But most of the drama is produced at Studio City's CBS Studio Center, onetime home of 'Gunsmoke,' 'My Three Sons,' 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' and other classics. NBC is sinking millions into the new starter, which has already shot locations and background scenes in Paris, France Camden, Maine and Oxnard, Calif., just up the coast from Malibu. 5 in Utah.'Passions' replaces 'Another World,' which apparently ran out of gas after 35 years. But you can find out by tuning in weekdays, starting Monday at 1 p.m. You can't imagine what goes on in the seemingly ideal community of Harmony, Maine. LOS ANGELES - Does the world need another soap opera? NBC apparently thinks so, and the network is premiering a brand-new soaper with an appropriate title: 'Passions.'

Passions soap opera complete series