From: Soap Opera Magazine
May 12, 1998
Article by: Linda Susman


Every time Matt tried to pursue romance with Ellen, she spurned his advances. This week on Port Charles, as Ellen prepares to leave town for a new job in San Diego, she admits her true feelings to Matt, and they make love.

Ellen's attitude adjustment begins during a talk with Kevin. She confides in him that she cares for Matt but can't bring herself to act on her emotions. Kevin convinces Ellen to follow her heart, but when she gets to Matt's apartment, she finds Grace there, partially clothed. Ellen jumps to the obvious (but in this case, wrong) conclusion and decides to stick with her plan to quit GH and move to California. Matt can't let Ellen go without addressing their unfinished personal business, so he goes to her apartment the night before she's set to leave, simply to clear the air.

"There's been a solid connection between them from the very beginning," Mitch Longley (Matt) says. "Matt is a patient man, more so than most people even are aware of. It's one of his positive traits. So he always knew there'd come an opportunity for him to lay it on the line. Whether she'd ever relinquish her control of herself remained to be seen. But if that ever happened, he would certainly be willing to step in, so to speak."

"The loss of her husband was very traumatic for her, and she just did not want to walk through that door again," Debbi Morgan (Ellen) says. "It's very difficult for her because she has not made love with a man since her husband died," head writer Lynn Marie Latham adds. "She has been very, very closed off. In a way she feels that she's being unfaithful to her husband, even though she knows in her mind that he would have wanted her to go ahead and have a happy life and not live in the past."

Ellen's inability to let go of the past, and Matt's current involvement with Grace, are typical of the complications facing couples on the brink of romance. But there also are other potential drawbacks for Ellen and Matt: He is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair; she is African-American, and he is white; and he is an intern, and she is the chief resident - his boss- at GH.

"Her feelings have been ambivalent up until now because of the fact that she does have romantic feelings for Matt but feels very uncertain and insecure about stepping over certain boundaries," Morgan says. "The fact that she doesn't just have a working relationship with him - she is his supervisor - makes it uncomfortable."

Latham says that one need look no further than the daily newspaper to see how true that is. "This is very real, and yet, in real life, many people meet their spouses in the work force."

Longley likes the possibilities in the workplace issue, which he thinks has been key to the development - or lack of development - of Matt and Ellen's relationship. "The tension between boss and employee is very fun to work with," he says. "I have no idea if Matt and Ellen are going to be a couple and keep it secret from everyone, but that sounds like it would be kind of a cute thing to do. But as far as sleeping together for the first time, what makes it happen is probably the safety of the fact that she's leaving. It really takes a lot of the pressure off and allows both of them to open up."

Even though Ellen may not have acknowledged, or has simply repressed, her feelings, Longley says Matt never mistook her actions as disinterest. "There are times when people have a look on their face, and then when they walk away it changes. They may get a little smirk or a little smile or something. Matt has caught that a couple of times. He's a reader of people well enough to know that there's really something going on."

Before Ellen and Matt can make love, however, they must deal with the reality of her emotional insecurity and his physical disability. Matt is deeply affected when she reveals her fear of intimacy - "I feel like a 15-year-old and don't know what to do" - and explains how having lost his whole family taught him that you can choose to build with whatever life hands you, and that love never dies, even when someone goes away. "This is a man who can't walk on his own, but who has strength and nurturing capabilities and passion," Longley says. "Ellen's got these issues, and it's sweet to kind of play against that and be the receiver of her fear, and to help her transfer that into passion and intimacy." Ellen responds to Matt's words with a kiss, and, sensing that she might have concerns about his sexual ability, he tells her that his injury doesn't interfere with lovemaking.

"I'm very grateful that the producers have chosen to not make it a big deal," Longley says. "This is not about a woman who is going to be in an intimate situation with this man who uses a wheelchair. People with disabilities who are lovemakers don't think about the limitations, and it's important for society to be exposed to a character who is not seeing himself as particularly limited in that area, because it goes against the social perception. It's mentioned very briefly in a way that is natural, because when you're the able-bodied partner, you may have a question or a curiosity."

"Even though Ellen's a doctor, she is a little tentative about moving forward with this," Latham says. "It's wonderful that we can deal with that on television and show that paraplegics can have a wonderful, full, fulfilling sex life. That is not what the normal public believes. They think there is no muscular sensation or anything from the waist down, and that's simply not true."

The third obstacle Ellen and Matt might have to face is race. "I very much appreciate that the writers have chosen not to write that element in so far," Morgan says. "To me that's like the easy route to go in terms of causing any kind of difficulty in pursuing a relationship, rather than just dealing with what's happening to them as people. I'm just really kind of bored and tired where every time you see a black and white actor get together on daytime or what have you, that if they're an interracial couple, that always has to come into play. I know many relationships with interracial couples where that is not a subject that even comes up in terms of being problematic. I don't think race is an issue at all for Ellen with Matt, and vice versa ." Longley also considers race a nonissue, "because the world I live in has gotten to a place of being very accepting of other people, regardless of their differences. The world has gotten so small, I think we need to focus on love and attraction as opposed to other issues."

Although the show hasn't yet included the racial factor in the couple's relationship, Latham says it may come up when Ellen - who leaves town the next day - returns to Port Charles. The most important part of Ellen and Matt's pairing, however, "is that he has not been able to put down roots because of his past, and she has thrown herself into work completely because she was so hurt emotionally when her husband died, and these two people are drawn together by a wonderful promise of being able to forge something that neither one of them thought they would ever have, and that's a future, a family."