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The Will & Grace Star Opens up About the Love of Her Life
The roles actress Shelley Morrison is best known for -- Karen’s sardonically surly maid Rosario on “Will & Grace” or impressionable novice nun Sister Sixto on “The Flying Nun,” – are characters steeped in single-dom (Rosario’s green-card marriage to “Just Jack” aside).
 But off-screen, Morrison has been happily married to director Walter Dominguez, who she calls, “remarkable, my rock.” In August of his year, the couple celebrated 35 years of wedded bliss and she talks exclusively to groomsonline about the secrets to a super relationship.
The couple are deep into a documentary they’re producing, “Weaving the Past,” which chronicles Dominguez’s grandfather’s involvement in the Mexican Revolution (which has its centennial in 2011). It’s a “labor of love,” explains Morrison. The couple have put up the money for the project which they are researching, shooting, and editing as well. “We’re doing it the way we want to,” she says, and calls the process, “tiring, challenging, exciting.”
Their love story began in a producer’s office on Highland Blvd. in Hollywood in February of 1973, where Dominguez was the assistant director and Morrison was auditioning for the lead. The then 36-year-old won the part, which found the production deep in the snow of Lake Arrowhead, Calif.
“I was 11 years older and he was dating someone else, so my thing was hands off,” she recalls. She was smitten, but kept it to herself, and her best friend, Eloise, who she’d “call up constantly,” describing Dominguez as “dear and kind and cute,” but resigning her fate to her “hands-off policy.”
Two months after the production ended, Dominguez began to call Morrison and revealed he’d broken off his prior attachment. Within two weeks of actually dating they realized they were soul mates.
In August, the couple took a camping trip on the California coast. “We were taking a trip to Cambria and decided to go up to San Luis Obispo and he proposed and I said ‘yes.’ In my heart we were already married.
They stopped off in San Francisco to visit Dominguez’s sister, so Morrison could “borrow a clean shirt” for the wedding ceremony. “I had camping clothes with me,” explains Morrison, “I had my schmatas, sweatshirts, Indian import shirts, t-shirts and Levis.”
They ended up spending the night there and stayed at the classically elegant Fairmont hotel, where they were able to stay in the bridal suite. “I even remember the name of it – the Dansig suite.”
The next morning, they headed to Reno. “We chose Reno instead of Vegas because Vegas was just too glitzy for us and we were already driving north anyway.” But on this Saturday night, the justice of the peace they chose had to watch his favorite show. In the days before Tivo, DVR and even VCRs, you had to watch a show when it aired.
“So we had to sit and watch ‘All in the Family’ with him,” says Morrison with a laugh.
She may have borrowed a clean shirt from her sister-in-law, but she “was still wearing Levis and boots – and we didn’t have a ring!”
They were married in the civil ceremony and then headed to Yosemite where they “were so tired, we just literally threw our sleeping bags on the ground. [Later] a bear even walked over us. That was my wedding night.”
The couple didn’t get rings until 12 years later: “we got plain gold bands. We’re very low maintenance. And the rings were on sale!”
But with Dominguez’s large Latino family, they couldn’t get away without a reception. “My mother-in-law threw a party for us at her house…and I got drunk, and I never drink. There were all these relatives coming out of the woodwork, they all wanted to see the ‘actress.’”
Morrison credits good marriage modeling by her parents. They displayed the tenants of a strong marriage. “My parents were married until 1942, when my father passed,” she says. Both her mother and father were “highly educated,” and despite the fact that they lived in a Bronx tenement, education and the arts were always emphasized.
It was, unquestionably, a loving household. She explains her appreciation of a proper relationship, “I guess it was because of their intimacy with one another. My father couldn’t walk by my mother without touching her, caressing her shoulder or cheek.”
While the couple does not have any biological children, they have six (now grown) adopted Native American children, and they also raised Morrison’s nephew from his birth to when he was 18 (in a couple of years, he, too, would return).
In addition to sharing their lives with their children, Morrison and Dominguez have been honored for their work providing for homeless and low-income families. They have endured personal challenges that include Morrison’s treatment for both breast and lung cancer.
Morrison describes marriage as a “very personal thing between two people,” before embarking on this endeavor, you must believe that “this is the person god-willing who’s going to spend your life with you. When you have have something that is that intimate, [a wedding], you can always have a party afterwards in the park where people bring their dogs, and kids. You can have a pot-luck celebration. Think of the money and aggravation you’ve avoided. There’s no worrying about who’s going to sit next to who.”
Given that most marriages are between people starting out their lives, she adds, that focusing on the minutia are things “two young people shouldn’t be burdened with. You can always ask a friend or relative who has a large backyard, to have a party for your wedding. All the wedding planners hate me! I suppose,” she adds with a laugh, “That the economy is bad enough without my putting dent in the wedding business!”
However, if a “young girl has always dreamed about a large wedding, then by all means, “ do it. She says thoughtfully, “This [the type of wedding and ceremony she and Dominguez had] is what worked for me.”
Cancer-survivor Morrison says, “It’s like I’ve never told anyone what kind of cancer treatment they should have, do whatever you and your doctor deem what’s best for you. I don’t like anyone to tell me what should or shouldn’t do, I did what worked for me, so if someone has a dream to do this, with ingenuity, with the economy the way it is, you can have your cake and eat it too.”
But the heart of a marriage is not a wedding or the ceremony – it’s what happens afterwards. “As long as your core values are the same,” says Morrison, “as long as you’re both on the same level playing-field, things will come up where you’ll go at each other, Walter and I are both Hispanic and we go at each other, then it’s over. We’ve never gone to bed angry.”
Disagreeing is a part of spending your life with someone: “If you don’t fight then you’re weird. You’ve committed to this person and you want this person to be happy. Don’t play games, the only games you should play are board games! Don’t do anything to make them jealous, that’ll backfire like a boomerang. Be honest, always be honest and trust them. We’re not jointed at the hip,” she says of Dominguez, “he has his projects, I have mine and then we share with each other.”
“I have no regrets that we just eloped,” Morrison says of that naturally organic choice 35 years ago. “It was perfect for us.”
Whenever Dominguez leaves their home, the house Morrison has lived in for 62 years, she says she “says a prayer for God to bring him home safely to me. Everyday, I get up at 4 a.m. and go to our back yard and say my prayers of gratitude.”
She’s still madly in love, too. “When he walks in the door, my heart goes pitty-pat. He’s the kindest person I’ve ever known in my life, he is a gentleman of the old school. He stands up when a lady walks in the door. It’s all real with him.”
And that, is what a groom should be for his bride, for the rest of their lives together.
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