Drew ended up as part of the gang who set off for Greenland to thwart Victor and his attempt at world domination. Did you enjoy Drew’s action-adventure side coming back into play? “Oh, yes. As I’ve said before, one of the things that I loved about coming in and playing Drew was that whole ex-Navy SEAL, kind of bad-ass part of him, and getting involved in multiple storylines. I love the action side of things. It’s really fun for me, I think it’s fun for the fans, and this was a dynamic that ties into the past between Drew and Victor, and Drew being held captive and all that. But also, on a heartfelt level, Willow had asked Drew to walk her down the aisle; that was one of my favorite things that I’ve gotten to do since I’ve been on the show. So Drew was not only trying to bring Victor down, but really, most importantly, was trying to save Willow’s life. I thought Drew’s investment in the whole mission was great on a couple of levels. It was a really fun few weeks and I had a great time doing it.”
This was really your first time working in such a substantive way with the legendary Genie Francis (Laura). “Oh, it was amazing. Last year, when GH went to Graceland, I had the chance to interview her. I had interviewed her before for [Hallmark’s] HOME & FAMILY, but this was an hour, sit-down deep dive into Genie’s life and we were able to talk about some things that she hadn’t really talked much about in all her interviews. We really kind of bonded over that and connected through that experience at Graceland, so I feel like whenever I see her now, it’s different, like [our relationship] is at a different level, because I’m a little bit of a fan boy, you know? It’s that sort of Susan Lucci [ex-Erica, ALL MY CHILDREN] thing, where Susan went from being somebody who was untouchable in my eyes to my dear friend [when they worked together during Mathison’s years as AMC’s Ryan]. I’m not at that level with Genie, but Genie is so iconic and she was my wife’s favorite when she was growing up and everything. So, now, from that place, we got to do these cool scenes in Greenland. We had worked together before, but not like this, and it was so fun to see the whole dynamic — what she brings to it, how she tweaks the scripts and her character and how bad-ass she can be. There was a scene where I had to kind of bring her in as a fake prisoner and I was being all gentle. I was being way too gentle — it was a bad choice, but I couldn’t help it, you know what I mean? I couldn’t, like, manhandle Genie Francis! She was like, ‘Listen, you can throw me around. Throw me around!’ She was really giving me permission to go for it and make the scene better. It was hard for me, but she was just so cool about it. I would go home every day and tell Vanessa [his wife] all about working with Genie. It was great!”
Drew came home and was immediately embroiled in this SEC drama with Carly, but as he pointed out, the plus side is that they don’t have to sneak around anymore. So, Cameron: How would you rate Drew and Carly’s sneaking around skills on a scale of one to 10? “I would say they were probably, like, a solid 1.5 out of 10 [laughs].”
