Dallas Actress Victoria Principal 'unlikely' to return

Original series actress Victoria Principal is unlikely to return to TNT‘s reboot of the iconic 1980s drama says producers Michael M Robin.

Principal played Pamela Barnes Ewing on Dallas between its original 1978 mini-series through to 1987; the character was married to Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) and the sister of Cliff Barnes (Ken Kercheval). The character was written out in 1987 when Pam was involved in a car-crash and later had plastic surgery returning to the show with a new actress, briefly, portraying the character.

With the revival of Dallas by TNT fans of the original have been hopeful that Victoria Principal would be tempted back to the series. The return of Pam Ewing to Southfork would certain cause lots of trouble for Bobby and his new wife Ann (Brenda Strong) and would upset J.R Ewing (Larry Hagman) who never liked his sister-in-law. However, Dallas producer Michael M Robin has said the actress is unlikely to return. Robin told Assignment X “She’s indicated that it’s something she’s not interested in, We take our leads from a lot of that so far.”

The bitter feud between the Barnes and Ewing families often caused tension in Bobby and Pam’s marriage. The dirty deeds of J.R Ewing (Larry Hagman) certainly didn’t help things between the couple nor did Pam’s unstable half-sister Katherine Wentworth (Morgan Brittany) who became obsessed with Bobby and successfully drove the couple apart leading to their divorce. Famously Katherine Wentworth “killed Bobby Ewing when she drove her car in to him, aiming for her sister, at the end of the 8th season. However, that event was later revealed to be a dream of Pam’s with both Bobby and Katherine remaining alive.

While Victoria Principal may not be heading back to Dallas there may be other returns on the cards for the second season. Robin told Assignment X: “As far as we’re concerned, everyone who was in the old show could be in this show. And it’s just about where the storytelling takes you, but we can revisit anyone who is in the mythology of the series”

Cynthia Cidre, Dallas‘ showrunner, recently stated she would like to bring back Gary Ewing (Ted Shackelford) and Valene Ewing (Joan Van Ark) to the series. The characters of Gary and Ewing, the parents of Lucy ‘poison dwarf’ Ewing (Charlene Tilton) appeared in several episodes early on in Dallas‘ original run before being spun-off into their own show; Knots Landing. The hugely successful spin-off ran between 1979 to 1993 with 344 episodes produced across its 14 seasons.