Extra! Extra!
On Soaps’ Tendency To Rewrite History: “It’s not unavoidable, but I think for an outsider coming in, it’s a different way of working. You don’t know what’s coming and you don’t necessarily know what comes before you because that changes. That’s something that bothers me. I don’t mind the ride, but there has to be a cornerstone, there has to be a history to someone. If something was a lie for the last three years, that kind of gets me. That’s why I left ONE LIFE [where he played Patrick Thornhart from 1995-97], because they changed the past. And suddenly, you have no tools left.”On Disciplining 4-Year-Old Daughter McKenna: “She’ll do stuff that I have to tell her not to do, like throwing things in the air. It’s terribly hard because our house is filled with cartoon art. I’ve got a big, eight-foot Chuck Jones bunny and one of the brooms from Fantasia and she doesn’t understand why she can’t play with them. They’re cartoony and she’s seen them on TV and so it’s a little tough to explain.” On AMC’s Transition From Ex-Head Writer Megan McTavish To The Head-Writing Team Of James Harmon Brown And Barbara Esensten: “If somebody else is coming in, it’s like you’re between coaches or something. You go, ‘Let’s just try to get through what has already been established by the last one.’ We can’t just completely stop it and come up with something else because whoever’s coming in next will change it again. But I think over the next few weeks, it’s all gonna change.”On AMC’s Underuse Of Its Vets: “It’s a funny thing. If you’ve got those guys on the canvas, you know, how come they’re not working all the time? How come David Canary [Adam/Stuart] doesn’t get [great] stuff all the time? We know he can do it! There’s a lot of people here that can. So why not? It seems that in this medium, they always want to try to find something new because they don’t want to bore the audience. But I don’t think the audience would be bored by it. [On GENERAL HOSPITAL, Maurice Benard (Sonny)] is an interesting actor. He delivers and they write for him. They write to people who can act. I think in soaps, you have to look first at who your players are and then decide what story to tell.”
On The Scenes In Which Ryan Grabbed Zach By The Throat At Spike’s Birthday Party: “I’ve said this before, but too many times, writers on soap operas try to create new things when there are so many old things that haven’t been resolved. In that scene, he was supposed to knock me out and I had a problem with that because here’s someone with anger issues who was in a fight club not too long ago and pretended to throw himself off a cliff wanting to die because he thought he would really hurt somebody and that hasn’t been dealt with. So, for him to grab somebody by the throat … don’t even worry about what it does to Zach, but what about what it does to Kendall, watching that? With Greenlee watching that? There are two kids in the room. Where’s the conversation where I say to him, ‘How are you doing? What’s going on? Is Spike going to be okay with you? I mean, you grabbed my throat in front of all these people….’
“I’m hoping these new writers — and I really like these two, on a personal level — pay attention to that. I hope that they deal with what’s already been set up as opposed to wanting to clean house and set up new stories. Ryan has an anger-management problem; that should be a part of Ryan’s story always. It was an interesting moment, but we haven’t followed it up with anything.”On His Next Big Storyline, Which You Can Read All About In The 6/26 Issue Of Digest: “This setup with Adam, I think it’s going to be a good one. It’s finally not about women; it’s about men, it’s about power, it’s about strength and honor, all those things. Even the scenes set at the casino, playing with the idea of winning and losing and what it means … I don’t know, there’s a lot of stuff that I hope gets explored between these three people: Adam, Zach and Junior.”
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Soap Opera Digest does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.