'I wanna wipe this floor with you': An oral history of Generations' iconic catfight

There was a time when the idea of an “integrated” TV show — specifically, one that gave Black and white characters equal prominence — was considered groundbreaking. And it was big news when, 35 years ago next month, NBC took a gamble on Generations, the first-ever daytime soap opera to feature a Black family at the center.

Created by Sally Sussman and starring several famous (and soon-to-be famous) faces, Generations followed two Chicago families: The Marshalls, including Ruth (Joan Pringle) and Henry (Taurean Blacque), CEO of Marshall’s Chicago Ice Cream, and the Whitmores, who employed Vivian Potter (Lynn Hamilton), Ruth’s mother, as a housekeeper when Ruth was a child. The Whitmores’ college-aged daughter, Stephanie (Kelly Rutherford), was childhood friends with the Marshalls’ son, Adam (Kristoff St. John), and as adults they became platonic roommates.

Though soap operas had been around for nearly 60 years by that point, none had ever highlighted Black characters so prominently, and Generations’ premiere was marked with enormous media fanfare. “The amount of publicity we got from mainstream media was off the charts,” recalls Sussman. “Time, Newsweek, New York Times, everything. This show was so far ahead of its time. However, it wasn't designed that way. It was designed to feature African American family life, white family life, and mixed family life, organically.”

Generations premiered Monday, March 27, 1989, opposite the No. 1 show in daytime, CBS’ The Young & The Restless. Week after week, the start-up soap ranked dead last in the ratings, and in January 1991 — just 13 months after Generations premiered to so much publicity — NBC pulled the plug. “This was pre-internet days, and there was a massive letter writing campaign [to save the show],” says Sussman. “Had the internet existed then, you and I both know that show would never have been canceled.”

Probably not. Even though Generations was gone too soon, fans never forgot it — and to this day, the short-lived soap opera is still celebrated for one of the best TV catfights of all time. In 1990, Dr. Daniel Reubens (Richard Roundtree) arrived in town with his spirited daughter Maya (Vivica A. Fox). Former jazz singer Doreen Jackson (Jonelle Allen) fell hard for Dr. Daniel — much to Maya’s consternation. Oh, and Maya began dating Adam Marshall, but when she found out that Doreen’s daughter, Danielle, was the product of her brief fling with Adam, there was hell to pay. It all culminated in a legendary physical showdown when Doreen came home after a formal event and found Maya waiting in her apartment. Words can’t really do the ensuing catfight justice, so please — treat yourself and watch it below:

To celebrate the upcoming 35^th anniversary of Generations’ premiere, EW asked the key players behind Doreen and Maya’s monumental brawl to share their memories from the set. Allen (currently appearing on the scripted soap podcast Forever and a Day) and Fox (nominated for directing the BET+ film First Lady of BMF at next month’s NAACP Image Awards) were happy to revisit their defining daytime drama moment.

BIRTH OF A RIVALRY

Both Jonelle Allen and Vivica A. Fox were new to daytime drama when NBC began casting for the roles of Doreen Jackson, a former jazz singer and recovering addict, and Maya Reubens, who spent much of her childhood on the run with her father after he was falsely accused of killing her mother. The Tony-nominated Allen joined Generations early in the show’s run, while Fox came on board shortly before 1990. Today, the former model believes her height — 5’7” — helped her land the role of Maya.

JONELLE ALLEN: My audition went well, but it got back to my agent that the network said, “We like her, but we’re not really sure if she can be sexy enough.” They decided to do a screen test with me and write a scene that was a little more provocative. I was in rehearsal for a play in L.A. On my lunch hour, I went and I got this little teddy, and a little kimono to wear over the teddy. I went into NBC Burbank to do the screen test, and I wore the sexy teddy, and I had a perfume bottle, and I was spritzing myself. They showed the sexy screen test to Brandon Tartikoff, who was the head of NBC at the time, and his daughter was watching the screen test. She looked at it and she said, “I like her!” So, I was cast as Doreen.

VIVICA A. FOX: I remember that I had to audition a lot, go through those hurdles that you go through. Then I had to screen test, and I just remember being young and seeing all the other girls there. When I auditioned with Kristoff, I could see that he was tall, and I thought, “Well, they’re going to need somebody that’s tall.” Kristoff was 6’1”, something like that. I was looking at the other actresses that were there, and I remember thinking, “I might have a good shot at this.” I’m telling you, at that time, I did a guest appearance on Beverly Hills, 90210, and I was working with all these tiny little male actors that I always used to have to wear flats with. So, when I saw my scene partner was Kristoff, I was like, “Yes!”

ALLEN: When Vivica joined as Maya, I just remember thinking, “Okay, what’s going to be going on now? Because here's this girl coming in with Adam and I have his baby.”

FOX: The fact that I got to work with Richard Roundtree — it was like, “Shaft is going to play your dad.” And I was like, “Get out of here!” My character just came in and took off. Kristoff and I, we got so much wonderful press. I remember feeling like, “Oh my gosh, I made it.”

SALLY SUSSMAN: Not only did Maya hate Doreen because she knew about the baby, but Doreen was now encroaching on her father, played by Richard Roundtree, who Maya adored. I remember the conversation vividly in the room [when we wrote the catfight] that Maya would be waiting for Doreen in her apartment. They were both dressed in these elegant dresses, and then they would go at it. Michelle Val Jean, who was one of the writers, came up with the line, “I wanna wipe this floor with you!”

FOX: If I can give you a little bit of backstory, Jonelle Allen and I did not get along when I first started working on the show. I was the new kid on the block. We had a little heated conversation one time in the makeup room and the executive producer of the show, he loved that I stood up for myself. He goes, “We got to write a fight scene with those two.” Now the crazy thing is, by the time we did the fight scene, she and I were getting along fine, because it took them a little while to write it. When we finally got the script, it made the fight scene even better, and we were totally game for it, like, "Let's make this as good as possible."

"COME GET ME, BITCH!"

The dialogue on the page was already priceless. (“I watched you tonight, hangin’ all over daddy like a cheap suit!” “Daniel Reubens loves me, and no little piece of street trash is gonna tell me otherwise!”) But Allen and Fox elevated the scene from catty confrontation to hall-of-fame smackdown by adding their own touches — like pulling off their earrings in preparation to fight — which they worked out over several rehearsals.

ANTHONY MORINA (Director): They were fearless. When you block it out as a director, you have certain stunts, and you have to create angles that hide their face, so you won’t give away that it’s not them. And the two of them were like, “What are you talking about? We not using stunt people. We’re doing this.”

ALLEN: Vivica and I both wanted to do the actual fight, so that it wasn't like some wide angle or cutaways. I'm a dancer, and she is as well. We rehearsed a lot. A stunt coordinator came in and worked with us and did the blocking for the camera. We absolutely took as much time as we could to rehearse, and I think we rehearsed at the end of the day as well, so that we could walk through it and go over all the marks we had to hit for the camera.

FOX: We just didn't want it to look fake, because there's nothing worse when you can see the stunt double. As you can see, I kind of dig doing fight scenes. I think we wanted to do a punch and they were like, “Nope, you can do slaps.” It was still daytime TV, so it had to be a girly catfight. She got the one punch at the end. It was a lot of slapping and destroying of furniture.

ALLEN: The lines were scripted. What we were doing while we were saying them — the earrings and all of that stuff — was not. I added the kicking off the shoes and the pulling up the train. The actors didn't get hurt, but the cameraman could have, because when I kicked off my shoes, I kicked my shoe so far it almost hit the camera! They were like, “You should have let us know that was coming!” Because in rehearsals, that move wasn’t there. But I went back into my dressing room and thought, I want to do something so it’s not just, “Okay, let’s fight.” So, I did the shoe kick, but of course, being a dancer, I kicked a little too high. It blew across the studio. [Laughs]

A line I added was, “My train! My train!” People think, “Oh my God, they're really fighting!” That gives it more of an intensity. But we were absolutely choreographed, and we had to be very exact with what we were doing. I'm really pleased that we were hitting all those marks, and it turned out as well as it did.

FOX: We did that whole choreography in one take, and we were so proud of each other. I mean, we were out of breath. It was like a beautiful dance more than anything else. We really went over that choreography of the fight scene and wanted to make it look as good as possible. And the production team was thrilled. They were like, “Yes, we got it!” I think my favorite part was just me sweeping her across that [table], and how she spread herself out, and we just destroy that apartment. It always looks more impactful than what it really was.

MORINA: They were never irresponsible about it, but there was nothing that was going to stop them. They had developed a really great relationship, but it was also a competitive relationship, which was normal. They were challenging each other, but they also protected each other.

SUSSMAN: You know how many times we watched it? It put the show in a different stratosphere. And I remember less than a year later, Y&R copied it. A lot of people copied it. All the subsequent [catfights] that have been forced upon people were not motivated. This one was so motivated, that even though Maya was the aggressor, you agreed with her. Doreen had it coming, but you can't overstate how long [the tension] was built up between them.

ALLEN: When Kristoff came into the scene, he almost got beaten up. We were so in it, and he's trying to break us apart, but we were pumped. The fight itself was choreographed. Him walking in and breaking it up was not, so he could have gotten hurt. He just thought he'd come in and separate us, but we were still going at it.

A GENERATIONAL LEGACY

While most short-lived shows eventually disappear into the pop culture ether, Generations continues to be celebrated by fans more than three decades after its cancellation. Whether they watched back in the day, discovered the soap when it aired overseas, or found old episodes and clips on YouTube, plenty of viewers are still talking about the first-ever “integrated” daytime drama — and they want to see more. Sussman, Allen, and Fox all say they’re open to the idea of a revival. (What are you waiting for, Peacock???)

ALLEN: It has grown through the years. In fact, I was at a cafe having lunch in West Hollywood, and I'm sitting there and suddenly, I hear my voice saying, “What do you want?” And it turns out that one of the guys sitting at a table nearby, that was his ringtone. I walked over and I said, “That's me!” And he went, [screams] “Doreen!!” That catfight has taken on a life of its own. It really has.

FOX: I remember getting a lot of fan mail. And still to this day, it’s posted on social media, and people tag me: “Epic Vivica A. Fox catfight on Generations!” It always makes its way on Instagram at least a couple of times a year. But can I tell you, the best compliment for me was when these two gay guys acted out our scene on Instagram. Everybody loves acting out our scenes. I mean, I must get a scene a week from Set it Off, or Generations, or Soul Food — people love tagging me. I get a little bit more [recognition] from Kill Bill than I do Generations, but they always say, “I remember where you first started at, girlfriend!” I’m going to tell you, the training that I received from working on Generations was immeasurable. I am a person that can memorize a script — because [on a soap opera] you do 20 pages a day, five times a week.

ALLEN: There are a lot of fans worldwide who are asking for a revival. There are these social media Generations groups from over the world. I mean, they know the show better than I do, really. They have photos or screenshots of things that I don't really remember because I never really watched the show.

FOX: There is this one fan on Twitter that just keeps on asking for a reunion. I guess they played it over in Europe, so they're like, “When can I get a reunion? They should bring this back.” And I'm like, “Well honey, a couple of people ain't here no more.” [Kristoff St. John passed away in 2019, and Richard Roundtree died in 2023.] But they loved the show, and it’s lived on on in perpetuity. It played all over the world.

SUSSMAN: Over the last number of years, several young writers — I'm talking very young, younger than 30 — who love soaps of all different stripes, have been reaching out to me about how much they love the show, because there are so many episodes on YouTube. They say how much they love the show, and that I must try and do a revival.

ALLEN: Revisiting these people later, and then seeing all the babies that were born who would be adults now and seeing what's up with their stories, would be exciting. And Sally's a great storyteller.

FOX: I would be totally game for a revival. Some of the young actors and I, we all still stay in touch. Kelly Rutherford and I stay in touch with each other. Even the writer, Michelle Val Jean, we still go out maybe every three months or so. We have dinner at Ruth's Chris.… I’d love to see soap operas make a comeback.

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