Joan Van Ark of “Knots Landing” Goes Very Dark for Lifetime

During her illustrious five-decade career, Joan Van Ark has worn many masks for her craft – but she has never looked the way she does as wedding dress designer Aunt Daisy in Lifetime’s Psycho Wedding Crasher (premiering Sunday).  Hidden under a short, dark-bobbed wig, Van Ark is virtually unrecognizable and downright devilish, devouring the screen in a performance that can only be described as “the aunt from hell.”  The 74-year-old star, who is best known for her long-running portrayal of Valene Ewing on the classic primetime soap operas Dallas and Knots Landing, as well as a sequel miniseries of the latter and the TNT reboot of the former, relished her latest role, given it was such a drastic departure from anything she had ever portrayed before.  “It was hard,” she recently told me during our exclusive interview.  “I want everyone to love me endlessly, 24/7, so to do this and be fair to the project, I had to go balls to the wall and not look back.”