The Scoop on Soap Star Kim Zimmer's Upcoming Tell-All Memoir
Kim Zimmer
As soap memoirs go, this one's a lollapalooza. TV Guide Magazine has had an early look at Kim Zimmer's autobiography, I'm Just Sayin'! (New American Library), which hits stores in August and — spoiler alert — it's sure to be a smash! Throughout her long and remarkable suds career, the four-time Emmy winning Zimmer — best known as Reva Shayne on Guiding Light — has wowed us with her take-no-prisoners performances and subversive, balls-to-the-wall interviews in the press. She delivers no less in this tantalizing tell-all.
I'm Just Sayin'! is packed with treasured memories, from Zimmer's early days on The Doctors (where she replaced Kathleen Turner) to her current return engagement as One Life to Live demon Echo DiSavoy. And along the way we get it all — the backstage battles, the devastating losses (Beverlee McKinsey, Michael Zaslow), her famously nutty Emmy hairdos, bad clothes, weight gains and, yes, her legendary boozing. Then there's Zimmer's dead-honest take on her crazy-ass soap plots (she subtitles the book Three Deaths, Seven Husbands and a Clone! My Life as a Daytime Diva). Her co-author, by the way, is Laura Morton, who did similar duties on Susan Lucci's current bestselling memoir, All of Me.
There's so much awesome stuff here, like the time Zimmer walked off the set of The Oprah Winfrey Show during a commercial break because she didn't like how Lady O was conducting the interview, and the time one of her precious Emmys was stolen right out of her house by a neighbor kid who presented it to his girlfriend, an aspiring actress. (Only on Planet Kim!) And I'll let her tell you about her notorious "pee-pee dance." Then there are the gut-punches, with Zimmer finally revealing how hard it was for her to handle exec producer Ellen Wheeler's mismanagement of Guiding Light, how she wishes the soap had been canceled two years sooner, and how she often performed drunk to get herself through the last difficult months of the show. Zimmer does not hide the DUI arrest and the mandatory AA meetings that forced her to reexamine her life and clean up her act.
This is a tough though never bitter or bitchy memoir. In fact, Zimmer shows uncharacteristic restraint while still delivering the goods in a scorchingly fabulous way. There's a lot of love and passion and grace here, too. Always an open book, she is hardest on herself.
Look for our chat with Zimmer upcoming in TV Guide Magazine. In the meantime, you can go to amazon.com and preorder I'm Just Sayin'! Trust me, soap peeps, you'll want to be the first on your block to read it.
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