Party Preparations Page 5
Q: Wouldn’t you love to have a great cat fight? Did you guys ever do that when you came back?
Marcil: No, actually, they were…I’m kinda known for fighting people on storylines and things like that because in my heart I’ll feel like something isn’t the right thing to do. Mostly what it is, is I like to do unconventional things. So I don’t like to do something that’s been done and done and done and done. And I did that with Brenda a lot, like I decided Brenda was never going to be in her bathing suit or lingerie, or drinking champagne with strawberries floating at the bottom. Kind of all that sexy stuff that’s been done, I feel over and over and over. One time I fought to have her and Maurice do kind of a love montage and both of them be in big white robes. And it was really sexy. And you know, they turned out to be this huge couple. So I think it’s interesting to have an element of mystery and not just have everything right out there all the time. Brenda is really unconventional, and I loved that about her.
Q: Can you tell us a little about your past, where you grew up and how you got into acting?
Marcil: I grew up in Indio, California, which is near Palm Springs. I got into professional acting accidentally. I was doing a lot of theater and when I moved to L.A. I was just giving a friend a ride to an audition and the director asked me if I wanted to audition, so I said alright since I was sitting there anyway. And I did, and I got a part in a play. And then there was an agent in the audience, and she asked if I wanted an agent and I said no, that I was going to go to law school. She said, “Just let me send you out for two months. Give me two months.” I said okay. She said I had to get headshots, and I said, “No,” I didn’t like having my picture taken. So she sent me out with a fake resume and Polaroids that she took of me backstage. Two weeks later I got a short film and three weeks later I got GENERAL HOSPITAL.Q: The production pace on Daytime dramas is so different from working on Primetime series. What are some of the lessons you’ve learned working on Daytime television all Primetime actors should have learned?
Marcil: Well, it’s true. It really is very different. It’s a really different way of shooting. Daytime television is more like doing theater, where there are four or more cameras. So you do a scene once and it gets every single person in the scene, so you can be really spontaneous. Primetime is like shooting a movie, so you may end up doing a scene seven, eight, 12 times before the scene is over. And you have to match what you did in the last scene and all of that. So I really think they’re really two separate muscles. Josh Duhamel and I talk about this all the time. It’s a completely different thing. The thing I think that daytime teaches you is, because you usually only have one or two passes at a scene, you really have to learn how to bring up whatever you need to bring up in a scene instantly. Daytime people know how to do that. Daytime people on a dime can bring up any emotion that they need right away. That definitely helps me.Q: Are there exercises that you learned doing Daytime that you still carry over?
Marcil: Well, you know, I was lucky. When I started on GENERAL HOSPITAL, we were all playing high school kids. We had an on-set acting coach, John Homa, who was unbelievable and really taught me all kinds of things and didn’t let me fall in bad habits. I’m so grateful for that. He really taught me that every scene and every moment is important, and that it’s just about being 100% in the moment. That’s actually been a great lesson for me, just to keep in life.
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