Loving Lusty
Soap Opera Weekly: What’s it like working together?
Garyson McCouch: Easy.
Peyton List: One scene at a time.
McCouch: One scene at a time.
Weekly: Is that your motto?
McCouch: Yep. They go right to tape with our stuff. It’s so demanding on the actors, and our way of handling it has been, “One at a time.” We’ll work on that one scene and then flush it down the toilet when the scene’s over. Then we ask for a brief pause to look at the next one.
Weekly: Do you rehearse your scenes a lot beforehand?
List: We run the lines for the words. But every single time we tape, it’s different.
McCouch: Peyton’s so cute. She’ll say, “Ugh, I’m not ready.” She’ll be in the hair room and we’re trying to cram in lines over hairblowers and she enters the scene sometimes unwillingly. Then all of a sudden they call action and it’s all over. She’s amazing.
Weekly: What has fan reaction been like?
McCouch: My business partner said to me, “Do you know you guys have your own Lusty fan site?” We have Lustyheads out there who are down with the chemistry.
List: I’ve run into people who have given me folders and official cards for their Web site.
McCouch: I was given a whole album on Lusty with pictures, letters and actual storyline. They wrote their own Lusty fantasies. They are very committed. It’s nice when people are so vocal about something they like. It’s helpful to hear.
List: Being here [at the set] sometimes you feel like it’s going a certain way and you feel really good about something and then it doesn’t turn out to be the way you thought it was. It’s cool to have a response where you feel like what you’re enjoying and experiencing, the audience is doing that, too. They get it and they’re in tune with it. 
Weekly: What about that age difference?
McCouch: No one blinks an eye at a 20-year difference as long as the guy’s like 45 or 50. Like 50 and 30 totally works. ‘Cause you know, the girl’s mature. If he’s mature, she’s younger, but it’s all well-suited. We’re probably right on track.
Weekly: What would you like to see happen with Lusty?
McCouch: Four kids and a Lusty marriage. I hope they stay together forever. She really has lured him in. The last thing he wants to be a part of is a responsible relationship. And yet here he is. He’s hooked. So regardless of what happens, she’ll be a tough one to get out of his system.
List: Just how they got together in the first place was so different from other couples. They started in extreme circumstances. They were tough with each other and as their relationship progresses they’re getting nicer to one another.
Weekly: It seems like it’s Dusty and Lucy against the world.
McCouch: I got to see her toughness and she was supposed to have this whole maturation process which she did through all these crises. We’ve been through a lot of stuff together in a short amount of time. There seems to be a loyalty and a devotion to one another.
List: She assumes that he knew about the loaded gloves [during the fight] because he knew that it was going to be fixed and she’s really upset because her friends are getting hurt. She goes off and cries and says he’s a jerk and she hates him and that’s it. But then within a day she turns around and is like, “Okay, I don’t really care.” She can’t go a day without him.
McCouch: There’s a security there that one would naturally have. I depend on feeling like she needs to be taken care of by me. I’m the only sensible figure in her life and the only one who can protect her. It’s a vain outlook but it is the way it is.
McCouch: Damn straight. You know a guy maybe goes down that road once, twice. If it doesn’t work out he’s too traumatized to ever go again, to have someone that beautiful and have it be that right and potentially have it traumatize you. You only have a handful, and this is probably the one.
Weekly: And Lucy’s put off college to stay with Dusty.
McCouch: That’s huge. Williams, no less. One of the top in the nation (laughs).
List: That’s a huge thing and people would tell me, “I can’t believe you’re putting off college.” Because their view on it was that it was a young, foolish, just jumping-before-you’re-looking-thing. It was a huge decision she completely thought through. The lines that Lucy were saying were, “I’m in love with Dusty and I’m staying here to be with him.” But I think off-camera she spent hours going,”I can’t believe I’m not going to go to college but…”
McCouch: Well, she’s smart enough.
List: She’s too smart.
McCouch: She corrects me all the time.
List: It’s making me feel bad.
McCouch: And it’s cool that the educated rich girl gives up the college education for the bad boy. It’s a nice compromise. They complement one another perfectly. She can’t stand her bullsh– uptown world and we meet on that middle ground.
List: People are like, “You smile now.” She feels safe and comfortable. I have funny lines. I get the script and I’m like, “She’s funny…sometimes.”
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