Soap Opera Digest: Do you remember when you first met?
Mishael Morgan: I feel like we met in passing, but I used to watch the show when she was little Cassie, so I do remember seeing Camryn and going, “Oh, my God, there’s Cassie!” Then I wondered, “What is she doing here? Cassie died years ago.” But I knew she came back as a ghost, so I was kind of curious what they were going to be doing with her.
Camryn Grimes: I think I’ve been on for, three years now. Maybe two-and-a-half, three years consistently?
Morgan: I started four years in May, so that would have been six months after I started.
Digest: When you started working
together at GC BUZZ, did you get the sense that it could lead to something more for your characters?
Morgan: I definitely felt like there was such a natural banter, just by the way we played off each other. I thought it was going somewhere and pushed us to do a little bit more. So, yeah, I had a feeling that it would continue.
Grimes: I was really hoping that it would continue, because Mariah only interacted with Sharon and Kevin for two years, and I was like, “Oh, cool. Maybe she’ll branch out.” But at the same time, you never know. They always try things and see if they work, so I had apprehension if I was ever going to start a story with people that I haven’t worked with before. Two seconds of GC BUZZ, I just felt, “This is so much fun, I hope the audience likes it.”
Digest: What was your reaction to the ladies becoming such rivals?
Grimes: I thought it was great, because Mariah has gone up against Summer and Abby, but they haven’t been worthy foes so much, because they’ve gotten closer in friendship. But, Mariah and Hilary are such a fantastic combination because they’re both strong women and they’re total opposites.
Morgan: I just felt like they wrote it in a way where we were able to be mean to each other, but there was a comedic aspect to it, which I love. I was so excited that we were going to keep doing this, because it’s just so much fun.
Grimes: You know that they’re like oil and water, so they’re never going to mix, but they’re worthy adversaries for each other.
Digest: Mishael, you had said you were initially reluctant about playing bitchy to Christel Khalil’s Lily to the point where she had to tell you, “Go for it!” Did you have the same hesitancy with saying similar lines to Camryn?
Grimes: Why do I feel like the answer is “no”?
Morgan: Yeah, no [laughs].
Grimes: See! I knew it was going to be no!
Morgan: The way Hilary was written with Mariah, it was really easy to be mean. This was a new period in Hilary’s life and she was attacking everything, so Mariah was just another person. Hilary just needed to put her in her place, and I think it was also Hilary seeing Mariah’s potential and her drive and she sees a little bit of herself in Mariah. So, when I put that in my head, I felt like it was a lot easier to be mean. When I was mean to Christel, I carried a little bit of guilt, because we didn’t get along in the beginning.
Grimes: Wait, you didn’t get along with Christel?
Morgan: No, we didn’t.
Grimes: Even as humans?
Morgan: Yeah. And then Christel came out for my birthday party, we got really drunk, and we became best friends.
Digest: Camryn, what do you enjoy about working with Mishael?
Grimes: Um….
Morgan: It doesn’t have to be that difficult, you know.
Grimes: Now you’re getting me all flustered, Mishael. There’s not a lot of room for messing up, and you want to be sure that you’re working with somebody who knows what they’re doing, and that’s Mishael. She loves to run lines and try new things. She’s a consummate professional.
Morgan: Aww, thank you.
Digest: Mishael, same question?
Morgan: I love working with Cammy because she’s such a sweet person. She’s also smart, she’s genuine, she’s funny and she brings a lot of that into her work. She’s just a natural talent, and I watched her when she was a kid, so working with her is sort of a dream come true.
Digest: As the feud between Hilary and Mariah escalated, did the same happen for how much fun you were having?
Morgan: Oh, 100 percent! We got to be bigger and meaner, and the more we got to know each other, the more fun it was to be mean because we could laugh
and laugh about it.
Grimes: I had to pour water on Melissa Ordway’s [Abby] head in a scene, but I know Melissa really well and love her, but I was also really excited to throw water on her head. The closer you get to somebody, for some reason, makes it more fun to torture them as your character. There was a scene where Mariah had to shove Hilary and I remember telling Mishael, “I’m really looking forward to this.” And she was like, “What?” I said, “No, not in a bad way, but I’m going to push you really hard, okay?” And she was like, “Okay!”
Digest: What are you guys like after you’re done playing nasty to each other? Are you laughing it up?
Morgan: Oh, yeah. We never stop laughing.
Grimes: We’re laughing right up until the countdown, “Five, four, three, two,” and then you have to pull it together and launch the scene, but I often wonder if they’re going to get, like, really mad at us. We’re always laughing and joking around. I’m sure they’re going to bring me upstairs and be like, “You need to stop.”
Morgan: All right, let’s calm down. We don’t need to give anybody any ideas.
Grimes: But that’s part of soap opera, that you need a mind that can do a million things at once, like focusing during your last touch-up of makeup and listening to what they want you to do, and also running lines with somebody and then in two seconds, you’re on.
Digest: When there’s down time, do you hang out together?
Morgan: You know, we haven’t!
Grimes: We did spend some time together at the Christmas party, which was really fun. I really like hanging out with Mishael!
Morgan: I think that is something that I want to do in the future and definitely hangout more off set, but maybe because we work so often with each other —
Grimes: Yeah, we work together every day.
Morgan: So, we never feel like, “I haven’t seen you in so long, we gotta go for a drink!” I just saw her yesterday and we had so much fun.
Digest: For now, it seems like your characters have this uneasy truce going on. Are you hoping that it doesn’t last?
Morgan: I actually really hope that Mariah and Hilary become friends on some level. Kind of frenemies, friends who love to hate each other, but they’re the one that each of them can really confide in. I’ve been trying to bleed that into the scenes because I think it would be nice and necessary. We’d be great at playing those scenes and not making them too soft.
Digest: They certainly wouldn’t worry about hurting each other’s feelings when it comes to saying the truth.
Morgan: Yeah, and we can have those really funny scenes where they have a heart-to-heart and then they’re like, “Yeah, okay, can we just get back to work? We really don’t need to hug it out.”
Grimes: I agree with Mishael. I think you kind of hate both of them when Mariah and Hilary go at it, so there always is that potential. At the same time, they need to be close enough to work together harmoniously. I think keeping them as — like Mishael said — frenemies is the perfect way to go, so that at any moment, Mariah or Hilary could mess up and then they’re at each other’s throats again, but they work it out. Even if they wanted to be friends, they’re so different. Hilary thinks that Mariah is shabby, kind of weird and ridiculous. And Mariah thinks that Hilary is outlandish, over-the-top and a diva, so they’re going to butt heads, and I think that’s where you get the push and pull of the relationship, which is fun to watch.
Morgan: And they respect each other, I think.
Grimes: Yeah, there’s a weird, underlying respect — under all of the disrespect. w
