Viewers of the People's Choice Awards on Jan. 9 may have been surprised to see Mark Collier (Mike, AS THE WORLD TURNS) during the CBS broadcast.

"It was just me up in the balcony, sitting with a bunch of fans talking about how the [voting] process is done," explains Collier, who was picked by producers of the awards to appear during the ceremony (both ATWT and The People's Choice Awards are produced by Procter & Gamble Productions). "They used to do [the voting] through a sample of chosen people, and now it's strictly the Internet. They had over 21 million votes or something."

After the awards, Collier ran into soap alum Josh Duhamel (ex-Leo, ALL MY CHILDREN). "I'd met him through Rebecca (Budig; Greenlee, AMC)," reveals Collier. "We didn't hang out that much, but caught up a little bit. He's done extremely well, so I'm happy for him."

Mother Nature didn't cooperate with Collier's plans for trip to "sunny" Los Angeles. "It was 3 o'clock in the afternoon and it was pitch-black dark, so it was very weird to see," he says. "A lot of people didn't show up to the after-parties because it was raining so bad."

Not that Collier was in the partying mood. "Unfortunately, I was sick most of the time," he groans. "I had this cold I couldn't get rid of and I had a lot of dialogue [coming up], so I spent a lot of time hanging out in the hotel studying my lines."

He has quite a few of them now that Mike is involved with Jennifer and Katie got engaged to Henry to make Mike jealous. "I don't think people have any idea where this story is going to go," he enthuses. "Mike has always been the one who loses out, and it's always two guys fighting for a girl. This part's been fun."

Try as he might, Mike can't seem to shake Katie. "There's always that one person that you have those feelings for," offers Collier. "Even though you know some things are wrong, you can't turn yourself away from them and you can't turn off your feelings for them. It's frustrating. Even though you have the most beautiful, perfect relationship in front of you, you still have those old feelings of the way the other person used to make you feel."

For a while there last summer, fans joked that Mike and his new pal Henry were the couple to watch. "I don't think they'd go there," chuckles Collier, who clearly enjoyed working with Trent Dawson (Henry). "We were working a lot, so it was pretty funny. It's fun to be goofy sometimes."

But Mike isn't laughing as Henry and Katie's wedding approaches. "It's a farce," declares Collier. "He's thinking, 'I'm not going to get involved in this game. I know what she's trying to do. She's trying to get me to stop the wedding and stand up and proclaim my love for her. I'm not going to sink to that level of immaturity. As much as I care about her, I know she's not in love with Henry.'

"Mike has always seen Katie and Henry as brother and sister, so to see them kissing is just gross," adds Collier. "It's like, 'Don't do that. I'm not going to buy that. Come on.'"