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Flashback!

My Early Years

"The Bold and the Beautiful" Set with Don Diamont
Don Diamont "The Bold and the Beautiful" Set with Don Diamont CBS Television City Los Angeles, Ca. 09/03/14 © John Paschal/jpistudios.com 310-657-9661 Credit: JPI

Don Diamont (Bill, B&B) started out in daytime as DAYS’s Carlo in 1984, but he quickly experienced the highs and lows of what the job can bring. “When I was on DAYS, I was voted Best Newcomer and fired in the same week,” he chuckles. “I was a young and inexperienced actor, but I don’t think that I was handled properly. I take responsibility for what happened with me on DAYS OF OUR LIVES, but had it been maybe a different producer with a different skill set, I could have been coached better than I was.”

He nabbed the role of Y&R’s Brad the next year and immediately felt a better vibe. “When I came to Y&R, the real dramatic difference for me there was [then-Executive Producer] Wes Kenney,” he notes. “What I learned during my DAYS experience was a certain professionalism that I brought to my opportunity on Y&R, but more so it was having Wes Kenney’s vast amount of experience to benefit from, having a guy who was so secure with himself and comfortable in his own skin. After my first day of shooting at Y&R, I was in my dressing room after I’d finished my scenes. There was  a knock on the door and there was Wes Kenney coming to see me, and saying, ‘Really good job today. Just stay focused on the task at hand. We have a long way to go, but we’re on the right track. I just wanted to express that.’ That’s a coach, that’s a mentor, and I am forever grateful to him for that.”
After seven years of playing GH’s Michael (and one Daytime Emmy win, as 2015’s Outstanding Supporting Actor), Chad Duell still hasn’t forgotten how agonizing his early months on the show were. “It was so crazy for me when I first came on GENERAL HOSPITAL,” he says. “I felt so much pressure and was so nervous all the time. I wasn’t even remotely delivering what I was capable of because I was so in my head. I was crying out for encouragement, really.”

Fortunately, he got it, and cites Steve Burton (ex-Jason) as a critical mentor. “I am so lucky that I had Steve Burton helping me out and guiding me through it all,” praises Duell. “I really needed him. His support was major for me, and he was in my corner a lot when I needed him. I don’t know what I would have done without him. He really helped me a lot. Steve was always going to my dressing room to go over stuff with me and talk me through things. Scott Reeves [ex-Steve] was also really helpful.”

Given how rough his own entry into daytime was, Duell is always happy to help the next generation of Port Charles newbies. “I’m telling you, I felt worse than anybody could possibly feel when I first came on, so when someone new comes onto the show, I have the experience to tell them, ‘When I started, I was so overwhelmed, I was having actual breakdowns, nervous breakdowns.’ I can tell people, ‘You’re definitely not worse than I was, and it only gets better!’ I try to help as much as I can, because I didn’t come on like, ‘Yeah, let’s do this!’ I came on and it was so, so hard for me.”

ABC

That advice he gives to people “is a lot about the speed we shoot at,” he explains. “You feel like you have to get it in one take and there’s an energy you need to get used to and the amount of dialogue that you’re supposed to get in one take, a lot of times, it can get you in their head. Actors aren’t able to be in the moment as much because they don’t want to mess up. That takes time and I tell them, ‘You have to trust that it gets better because it’s like a muscle, this way of working. You’ll build up your muscle and then you just kind of sail.’ Once you get the hang of the work and the character, you’ll be fine, but it’s a challenge at first not to be overwhelmed. So I tell them, ‘It does get better. Just take everything a scene at a time, or memorize a page at a time.’ It’s about keeping things simple so you don’t overwhelm yourself.”

Greg Vaughan (Eric, DAYS) says he was hard on himself when he started out in soaps as Y&R’s Diego in 2002, but eventually learned how to take it one day at a time. “I’m a perfectionist, so I’m very critical about my work,” he explains. “I want to be good at what I’m doing. Over the years, my experience and working with seasoned vets gave me confidence. No matter where [a scene] started and where it ended, you put your mark on it and leave it behind.”

JPI

Darin Brooks (Wyatt, B&B; ex-Max, DAYS) also strived for greatness from the get-go. “I was gung-ho,” he recalls. “I worked pretty hard. I’d go to acting class and then go to work and apply what I’d learned in class. I wish I’d done some more writing. My advice to young actors starting out is to do everything. Try everything: act, write. Do as much as you can and accomplish as much as you can. I’m pretty happy with how things turned out for me.”

Since Sharon Case had brief stints on AS THE WORLD TURNS (ex-Debbie) and GH (ex-Dawn), the actress already knew what to expect on her first day at Y&R, where she was the second recast for the character of Sharon. She became familiar with the lay of the land by observing the big stars in action. “I mostly watched Mel [Thomas Scott, Nikki] and Eric [Braeden, Victor], because they really were setting that tone on the stage,” Case explains. “Do we work fast? Slow? Do we do a lot of rehearsals? Do we joke around all the time or straight to business? What’s the temperature on the stage or how do we go about it? I learned the pace of the show from watching them, so that I had to get grooved into [it]. I’ve watched them for years and still learn things from watching them today.”

Although playing Y&R’s Kevin was Greg Rikaart’s first daytime soap, he did have realistic expectations when he debuted in 2003. “I knew it would be challenging and that my role would be meaty,” he shares. “When Kevin first came to town, he was angry and sinister, so playing that was challenging. Even 14 years ago, the pace was so much faster than any work I had done prior to when I came here, but there wasn’t really any time to think about what I expected. It was about doing your scene and moving on to the next.”

JPI

Appearing simultaneously as DAYS’s Justin and GH’s Ned, Wally Kurth is one of the busiest actors in daytime, and that’s his advice to young actors today: Stay busy. “I would say to young actors, spend as much time with the material as you can. I spend a lot of time with the material now. I don’t know if maybe I have more time in my life now, but I take scripts with me wherever I go, when I go to the beach with my son or what have you, they’re always in my car and I look at them at various times throughout the day. It’s not like back in the day when the night before I’d be in a panic and have to assure myself, ‘It will all come. It will all work out.’ I definitely enjoy the process of building to one take — that’s like opening night to me. You’ve got to be prepared. That’s what young actors need to know. You can never afford to be lazy. Daytime moves too fast for lazy actors. That’s why I love running lines now because it’s like acting class. We talk about the scenes and make decisions about tone and the direction of the scene. Since there’s no time for rehearsal anymore, we examine things closely and help each other out while doing it — that builds camaraderie while making the scenes the best they can be. I’m so grateful to have worked with the actors I’ve worked with on both shows.”

NBC

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