Playing Catch-Up
On Daughter Kaya, 5: “She’s good. She’s really good! She’s very funny. [Digest mentions seeing some recent paparazzi pics of the mother/daughter duo.] It’s funny because she has a love/hate thing with the paparazzi. We arrive somewhere and she gets really shy and hides behind my leg, and then I say, ‘Come on, let’s go, you don’t have to take any pictures,’ and as I start to walk on and grab her hand, she stops! I think it’s mostly that she doesn’t want to take pictures with me; she wants to take them by herself. So when I start to walk away and try to shield her, she’s like, ‘No, Mama, no!’ And she stands in the middle of the carpet with her hands on her hips. She just doesn’t like to share the spotlight [laughs]!”On Her Continuing AMC Ties: “I haven’t seen anybody in a while, since last summer when I stopped in to say hey. I did just talk to them because for my birthday, they made a tape for me from everyone at ALL MY CHILDREN and sent it to me in L.A. It was really, really sweet. It was Aiden [Turner, Aidan] and Thorsten [Kaye, Zach] and the makeup and hair people, all my friends from makeup and hair.”On Her AMC Habit: “I tune in at least once a week, still. I had to see this whole killer situation!”
On Becoming A Series Regular on CSI: MIAMI: “The biggest difference is the sense of security. It’s really been fun; they started me out really well this year and gave me more personal storylines. They gave me more of the soap opera stuff to do. They didn’t cover a lot of backstory before, so I was really happy with the way they [incorporated that] this year.” On The Sitcom Her Friends Kelly Ripa [ex-Hayley] and Mark Consuelos [ex-Mateo] Are Developing: “It’s THE OFFICE set at a soap opera. She made me laugh so much telling me about being in meetings about the show. Every single story that they pitched, every single one, was absolutely true and not made up. But every single time they were like, ‘Okay, this is what’s gonna happen in this episode,’ all of the execs were like, ‘But no one would ever believe that!’ And Kelly’s like, ‘This is exactly how it happened, I am telling you! It happened to me!’ “On The Competition At Claritin.com To Win A Date With Her Allergy-Afflicted Self: “When I was little, I was really allergic to horses, but I grew up with horses, so [I built up a tolerance], but it got really bad in the spring, when they were shedding. But when I moved to New York for ALL MY CHILDREN, I got hit really hard by allergies, to the point where I would be sneezing so hard and so bleary-eyed, nose-running, miserable, that I had to start taking allergy medicine. This was 12 years ago and the only thing that worked for me was Claritin. They found out I’m a Claritin lover, so the Claritin people came to me and said, ‘Hey, we’re doing this contest, a ‘One Day With’ type thing, and I thought it would be fun to be part of.’ It’s supposed to be for horseback-riding, but if you’re into shopping, I’m up for that as well [laughs].”Her Plans For Summer: “I am going to Uganda at the end of May, early June, to do a documentary about, well, Uganda! I’m not even quite sure how I stumbled into it, but I’m really excited about it. They’ve had a civil war for 20 years, half a million people in refugee camps, and now they’re in something of a calm time, but AIDS is on the rise. We’re going to go in and do this documentary called Periled Pearl and Bill Gates’s foundation is interested in coming on board with us to help set up 50 infrastructure installations. In Uganda, there just is no infrastructure; there are no food banks, no welfare system, no orphanages. Just throwing money at the situation doesn’t really help.
I feel so strongly about this project. I’m psyched! I’ve never been so excited about working on something so scary. I’m going to be hosting it, but they’ll be doing it sort of like my journey through this country. I’m interviewing [Yoweri] Museveni, who is the president of Uganda, [United Kingdom Prime Minister] Tony Blair, [former United Nations Secretary General] Kofi Annan, and also Bill Clinton, who dealt with Uganda during the toughest part of their civil war. Hopefully, they’ll be writing the questions for me because I’m not the brightest [laughs]! I’m getting a crash course in political diplomacy and Eastern African history, though, believe me.”On Her Professional Debt To AMC: “So many actors put down soaps — ‘I’m not gonna do a soap, blah, blah’ — but I have to say, the best jobs that have ever come my way have been because of ALL MY CHILDREN. I got CSI: MIAMI because the executive producers of CSI: MIAMI are ALL MY CHILDREN fans and this Uganda project came my way because the producer of the project’s wife is a huge ALL MY CHILDREN fan! CSI came into play as well because they wanted someone with a show that airs in almost every country.”
Conversation
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