‘Dallas' star says TV ‘cougar' Linda Gray's prank during controversial kiss left his lips numb
The actor played camp counselor Peter Richards, the much younger lover of Gray's Sue Ellen Ewing on the hit TV series 'Dallas' from 1983 to 1984. The now 64-year-old, an aspiring filmmaker, is currently fundraising for an upcoming project.
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'They put me and Linda together, and she was the very first cougar,' Atkins told Fox News Digital. 'Our very first kissing scene, which solidified this moment between the two of us, was on a dock at this place on a lake. And everybody's standing there watching. Usually, everybody goes home after their scenes… They say, 'Action,' and we had our moment. We do have our big kiss, we pull apart and they cut.'
'Linda says to me, 'So how was it?'' he recalled. 'I'm thinking, 'What am I supposed to say to that? Oh, it was terrible, let's do it again? What do you say?' I said, 'Yeah, it was good.' And then all of a sudden, my lips go completely numb. She, as a joke, had put on her lips all that… stuff that they numb your gums with before the dentist gives you the needle. Put it all over her lips and gave me this kiss.'
'That was my introduction to 'Dallas,'' he chuckled.
4 Linda Gray attends The 2024 Farrah Fawcett Foundation Tex-Mex Fiesta on October 24, 2024 in Dallas, Texas.
Getty Images for Farrah Fawcett Foundation
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The steamy TV romance made headlines in its day. Sue Ellen, who was married to philandering oil tycoon J.R. Ewing (played by Larry Hagman), was depicted sneaking about with her boy toy, USA Today reported. Atkins, 22, and Gray, 43, famously made the cover of US magazine with the headline, 'Robbing the Cradle.'
'I'll never forget, I was walking… at a hotel, and this lady, you could see her, she's staring at me,' he said. 'This woman starts coming straight at me, comes right up [to] my face and says, 'You're too young for her!' This is what it was. And it was robbing the cradle.'
Atkins described the cast of 'Dallas' as pranksters — and no one left the studio unscathed.
4 Linda Gray supposedly put numbing cream on her lips before the big kiss.
CBS via Getty Images
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'They were all practical jokers,' he said. 'They were all crazy. They were just fun and nuts.'
As part of his sex symbol role, 'Dallas' producers made him wear tiny swim trunks.
'I got a note from the network saying to quit stuffing my Speedo,' Atkins chuckled. 'I was thinking, what the heck is that? I mean, it's sort of a backhanded compliment… I think Larry Hagman or somebody was just [pranking me] because they put me in a Speedo for the show. They didn't have to, but that's what they did. So I think the note came as more of a joke.'
By then, Atkins had already stripped down for his first movie, 1980's 'The Blue Lagoon.' He was 18 and his co-star, Brooke Shields, was 14.
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Shields and the film's crew have long maintained that she used body doubles for nude scenes and that her hair was glued on to her body to avoid exposing her chest, People magazine reported.
Atkins auditioned for the role in hopes of simply getting bragging rights that he read for a major film. He ended up being chosen from among 4,000 hopefuls.
'I kept getting called back,' said Atkins. 'The last one was with Julie Warner, who was in 'Doc Hollywood' with Michael J. Fox years later. She would've gotten the part if Brooke didn't. I knew the director wanted Brooke Shields, but I didn't know that much about her at the time.'
'I lived on [a] boat off the island [where we were filming]… she hadn't come yet,' he said. 'She had another week or so before she was going to get here. The director had put her picture up over my bed so that I could start falling in love with her before the movie started. That was my introduction to Brooke Shields.'
4 Actor Christopher Atkins, 2015.
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While the film was controversial for depicting the two young characters in a sexual relationship, it wasn't the first time that Shields raised eyebrows. People magazine reported that two years earlier, she starred in 'Pretty Baby', where she played a 12-year-old prostitute.
'The crew were all Australian,' said Atkins. 'Back in the day, all the Australian beaches… were topless. It was very natural and freeing for the Australians… And being on a deserted island, there were no tourists, nothing. It was just us on this island… [And] these two kids, in a natural [and deserted] environment, they wouldn't wear clothes. It wouldn't be something that was in the forefront of their minds, that they needed to cover up.'
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'As time went on, it just became more and more natural not to have clothes on,' said Atkins. 'The crew made it very, very easy. Randall [Kleiser], the director, made it very, very easy about it. [The scenes] were absolutely important for the film, but it wasn't grandiose. It wasn't something that was there for the exhibition of the film. He really wanted this to be as natural and as real as possible. I understood that and got that.'
4 Christopher Atkins and Linda Gray on the set of Dallas.
Getty Images
'By the time I was done leaving that island four and a half months later, it [was] really hard for me to keep my clothes on at a beach,' he joked.
People magazine noted that critics loathed the film. However, it was nominated for an Academy Award for best cinematography. The outlet reported that the film raked in more than $58 million, making it the ninth-highest-grossing film of 1980.
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Looking back at his Hollywood career, Atkins insisted there are no regrets.
'I got to a point in my life where I married young,' he said. 'I wanted to be a dad more than chase the business… When I was 16 years old, I used to teach sailing in Rye, New York, to little kids. From that measly paycheck that I was getting, I used to put a dollar away for someday when I had kids. That's how badly I wanted kids. When I had my two kids, I just did whatever came my way, just to put food on the table for them and keep working.'
'I've been blessed,' he reflected. 'I've done over 100 different movies and television shows at this point. Now my kids have their kids, and that's pretty remarkable… I've done everything in this business except make my own film. That's the last box I now want to check off… That's what I'm chasing right now, putting some really good projects together… So there are no regrets.'
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