ABSTRACT
In audience participation media, it seems, there is a great need for members of the public to appear credible on screen, and rooting out the “fakes” is an important activity for viewers and producers alike. But what happens when all the people on screen are fakes? The popularity of fictional media rivals that of any other genre, so clearly credibility, in the sense of authenticity, is not a barrier to the enjoyment of film and television in general. In this chapter, I focus on a particularly successful form of fictional mediathe soap opera1-where “faking it” is a full-time occupation for actors and actresses, who spend much of their careers playing a single character in a parallel universe.
