Vincent Irizarry‘s David is back to his old stomping grounds and up to his old tricks. Digest spoke to the actor about leaving Y&R, rejoining AMC, and everything in between.
On Being Dismissed From AMC In 2006: “Leaving gave me the opportunity to go out to California, do something different, then come back and do it again. So it was okay.”
On Living Bicoastally While Playing Y&R’s David: “It turned into 22 months that I was there total. I would do four days here, five days there, three days here, three days there…. They were very good about accommodating me, so I was very grateful. [To stay in touch with me family] we did phone calls every day, and toward the end, we set up a webcam. I would talk to the production company about special events. I only had to take the red-eye once, to get back home for my son’s birthday party. I was sort of a zombie by the end of the day, but there was no way I would have missed it. We made the best of it. The kids loved coming out to visit me. I brought each of my children out indvidually so we could have special, quality time, just the two of us.”
On His Genoa City Ties: “I knew a lot of people there, which was great. Peter [Bergman, Jack], I knew from years ago; when he went to Y&R, I was on GUIDING LIGHT [as Nick]. Christian LeBlanc [Michael] I knew from his AS THE WORLD TURNS days [as Kirk]. It was nice to meet Doug Davidson [Paul], who’s such a sweetheart. Judith [Chapman, Gloria] is great. We did a staged reading in Palm Springs together with several cast members and John Callahan [ex-Edmund, AMC] was a part of that, too.”
On Briefly (And We Do Mean Briefly) Working With NuBabe Amanda Baker (ex-Babe): “My first scene was carrying her to the rooftop. She’s a special kid. I liked her a lot. I thought she did a beautiful job with the character and I regret that I didn’t have the opportunity to work with her, but that’s the way it worked out. We both couldn’t help but laugh about the fact that my first day in, I had to run up to her dead body and pound on her chest. She’s a sweetheart.”
On A “Schizophrenic” AMC Scene: “In the funeral parlor, when JR holds the bottle to David’s neck and we go off to commercial, the scene that we did next, we did like six takes — start, stop, start, stop. It was just weird because when it came back, a tear had gone down my face, but you didn’t see it happen. Some of it was my fault because I had the phrase ‘carotid artery,’ and I know how to say ‘carotid artery,’ but in the heat of the emotion of the scene, I was pronouncing it every way but the right one! And we had some technical problems. So by the sixth time, we finally got it. That show was so schizophrenic with scheduling that the scene after the funeral parlor when he walks away from me and closes the coffin, the next scene, Krystal comes walking in. They needed to do those scenes before Amanda left, because she was in the coffin, so the scene where Krystal comes in, we shot five or six days later. Then David goes home and has an apparition of Babe and the next scene, he gets a gun and holds it to his head. That was seven days later, that we did those scenes. I was like, ‘Oh, man!’ I was worried about my facial growth, how much there was.”
On Getting His Soap Start As GL’s Lujack: “Hope Smith [who later became a producer on shows ranging from GH to B&B] was a production assistant at the time and she was in the office when I went to do my audition with [late casting director] Betty Rea. I went into the production office, because it was right outside the door to Betty’s office, and I was preparing to go in, going, ‘Don’t mind me,’ and then I go through the door, it was supposed to be a ladies’ room and I was supposed to harass Mindy or something, so I went in and sat on her desk, took out a cigarette and everything, improvising this whole thing with her, and she was so great, Betty Rea, and after I did it, she was like, ‘Just wait here a minute.’ She went and got Gail Kobe, who was the executive producer at the time, and we did it again. I was working at Joe Allen’s on restaurant row, I had just started and spent a week trailing the other waiters, and this was going to be my first night as a waiter, and before my shift started, the bartender goes, ‘Vince, there’s a call for you.’ It was my agent saying, ‘They gave you the part!’ Even Hope Smith still talks about it, this actor going, ‘Don’t mind me.’ “
