Actress Mishael (pronounced Mishell) Morgan may have left TT to live abroad when she was just five, but her ties to the country of her birth remain strong.
And it’s not just because she has relatives scattered all across the island.
Morgan, who plays the role of Amanda Sinclair on the CBS daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless, told WMN during a Zoom interview that her decision to set aside her plan to be a lawyer took place in a hospital bed in TT over a decade ago after a tragic accident.
“It’s like I was born in Trinidad and reborn in Trinidad.
"I went back to TT when I was 19 and broke my neck in a car accident.
"We were visiting for Christmas and my sister and I went out with my cousin. My cousin was driving and we had been out all day and I fell asleep in the back seat because I was so exhausted.
"When I woke up I was in the hospital with my neck broken.”
During a long stay in hospital, a lot of it spent lying just staring at the ceiling, Morgan said she started to re-evaluate her life.
“I had wanted to be an attorney my whole life, but I just felt that it was also just my parents’ path too because I always had this hidden love for acting, and I realised I would regret not doing it if I really was paralysed. I talked to God and what I said is, ‘If you give me another chance and I get to walk again, the one thing I’ll do is try,’ because I literally heard a voice that said, ‘You never try.’”
[caption id="attachment_918184" align="alignnone" width="683"] After surviving an accident in Trinidad when she was 19, Mishael Morgan felt she had a second chance to pursue her dream and become an actress. Photo courtesy Paul Smith Photography. -[/caption]
After successful surgery, Morgan returned home to Canada and kept her promise to “try” by taking roles in episodic and feature films. Eventually she was offered a role in the popular CBS soap opera, packed her bags and left Canada for Los Angeles.
She has been with the show for eight years.
“I left the show when my character, Hilary (Curtis), had been killed off. Less than a year later they called me and begged me to come back...I wasn’t sure how they were going to bring me back, because my character had died in the arms of the love of her life. Now, I play her twin sister, Amanda,” who as fate would have it, is an on-screen criminal lawyer.
“So my dream did come true. I’m a lawyer – but this way it’s more fun because I don’t have to worry about the consequences of losing a case or doing all that paperwork. I just have to act like I know what I’m doing,” she said with a laugh.
Her two characters, she said, may be twins, but they have totally opposite personalities. Amanda is driven, has high scruples, knows what she wants and just started her own practice. Hilary was unscrupulous and did whatever was necessary to get what she wanted.
“Hilary was more Jack Abbott’s friend and Amanda befriended Victor Newman,” which highlighted the side each twin chose in the decades-long Abbott/Newman feud.
But, Morgan said with a mischievous grin
