David Tom Off One Life To Live

Soap Opera Weekly
Sept. 14, 2004

In This Weeks Soap Opera Weekly (Sept. 14th Issue) It Has Been Reported That David Will Be Leaving The Roll Of "Paul Cramer"

David Tom has been let go from his role of Paul on One Life To Live, but sources say he wasn’t the first to hear the news. Apparently, his sister Heather Tom found out first. According to a source close to the actress, “Heather read a script that said “I could just kill Paul Cramer! and she went “Uh-oh.’ There were references to hating Paul extremely. It sounded [serious] to make her go, “Hmmm” and bringing it to David’s attention. David called Frank Valenti and said, “Am I getting killed off and Frank said, “Yep.”

The news of Tom’s release(the source says he had six months left in his contract) came a week after he returned to the screen as Paul following a sudden five-week hiatus for personal reasons during which he was replaced with Shane McRae.

Tom himself replaced Brock Cuchna in the roll of in March. Tom started off strong, effectivily taking the character in a new direction, but Paul was made virtually irredeemable when he switched the AMC/OLTL babies and let AMC's Bianca think her baby had died. "I've done a couple of bad things," Tom admitted recently. "I like being a bad guy. Its fun, something to sink your teeth into. There's alot meant to it. Just as long as they don't kill me, I'm fine."

The character of Paul has actually "died" once before, but the time it looks like its for good. ABC had no comment.