Even before working in soaps, you’ve played a lot of bad girls. “Absolutely. My 20 years of acting in this business has been playing bad girls, although I did start out my career playing the sweet girl next door. But you get older and more mature, go through life, and your face changes. I think I have one of those faces that can play a strong villain character. So physically, I just started getting cast in those roles.”
When that shift happened, was it easy to connect with it and go for it? “Sure, because everything you’re playing comes from within. It’s not like I was trying to play a bad girl. It was playing a girl who didn’t get what she wanted and had to fight for it. Sometimes when things are written in a certain way, it seems like it’s darker than it really is, but it’s just an actress going after her truth. So it wasn’t that it was hard. I still played the good girl, heroine or girl next door the same way I would play the villain and the darker people. As actors, we have to go deep into ourselves to find those dark moments and bring them to the character.”
What do you see as Kristen’s redeeming qualities? “She’s a passionate woman. She goes after what she wants, which I really admire in a human being. She’s loyal. She’s a really good mom. She wants to be something better in life. She’s striving for something more.”
Have you ever worried that she might become irredeemable or get written into a corner? “Yeah, but then I look back at the past five years of working on the show, and I find it to be that she goes all over the place. She’s not just black-and-white, she’s gray. I like playing gray, because we all have a dark side in us and a light side. Pretty much every character on the show has had some dark side about them. What also makes Kristen where she’s at is how people talk about her. Some people, like Lani, give her the benefit of the doubt, but other people just want to keep their judgment on her as she’s bad. There are some people that love her, and some people who think she’s this awful person. Being bad is part of who she is. That’s the drama of what wonderful characters are.”
Is it more fun playing a baddie than playing a heroine? “The bad girls get to do more. They get to play and throw things around. I do enjoy it. Again, I don’t always see Kristen as a baddie. It’s just her actions [that are bad].”
What do you like best about playing a bad girl? “The darker the character, the more layers you have to discover within yourself. As an actress that’s pretty wonderful, challenging and exciting.”
How do you establish trust with a scene partner when you have to rough them up in character? For example, the time Kristen kidnapped Sarah and put her into a crate. “I always talk to my actors ahead of time, like Linsey [Godfrey, Sarah] or Paul [Telfer, Xander]. I say, ‘Look, I’m a spontaneous actress. I don’t really plan, plan, plan, but I would never hurt you.’ They’re always [like], ‘Yeah, play. Go for it. Do it.’ Linsey’s always excited about it. She’s a tough little cookie.”
Is it hard shaking off your character’s darkness after a scene ends? “It used to be for me, because you get to a point where you’re constantly doing these nasty things to people, and you’re trying to find ways inside you that make sense. When I was playing Patty on Y&R, there was a lot of psychological stuff that I was dealing with and how desperate she had become. I would come home and I’d get emotional. That was when I started to learn that you’ve got to separate, or you could go absolutely nuts. You get anxiety-ridden. You have to come home and chill with a glass of wine.”
Is it harder to get into character when you’re playing someone devious? “No, because a lot of it is coming from the truth. What is the truth of the scene and who is Kristen? It’s the same way you would play another character, but because Kristen has a lot of layers to her, it’s very different from playing Susan, who’s a bundle of joy, comes in and loves life. Kristen just has so much darkness inside her, but she also has the light.”
When you meet fans in person, are they ever surprised to discover that you’re a nice person? “Sure, all the time. At the last [event] that we did, they didn’t want to meet me at the beginning. Eric [Martsolf, Brady] had to tell them that I was actually a nice person. But now the fans are starting to know who I am as Stacy, so they know that my character is nothing like me.”
How do you decide how far to take the evil in scenes? “I go with an instinct. I find my layers, and I just play the scene as it’s going. Yeah, you make decisions: ‘This needs to go to this place. How do I build it up to that place?’ I take it as far as it can go depending on how far I feel it needs to go. There are times I don’t even know where it’s going.”
What do you consider to be the most dastardly deed your character has done? “Maybe it was stabbing Victor. Her anger just took her to another level. But look what he did to her baby [letting Kristen believe her child had died and giving it to Sarah]. You can justify all the things that she’s done.”
Do you think she harbors any guilt regarding her bad actions? “I think she has a moment or two where she thinks about it and is like, ‘I probably shouldn’t have done that. But I did it, and I have to move on.’ ”
How does Kristen justify her misdeeds to herself? “That she has no choice. And you know what? They had it coming!”
