Thorsten Kaye (Ridge, B&B)
“Finding a soap that will hire you.”
Stacy Haiduk (Kristen, DAYS)
“Learning all the dialogue and learning everybody’s name, who’s who, and their relationship to everyone.”
Sasha Calle (Lola, Y&R)
“Learning 40 pages a day. I mean, every single day. Thank God, I had Michael Mealor [Kyle] with me. It was difficult, but at the same time, it was a lot of fun because we were all a team and doing it together.”
Katelyn MacMullen (Willow, GH)
“For me, the hardest thing was just my lack of on-camera experience. My first day, I had a scene with Becky [Herbst, Elizabeth] and Roger [Howarth, Franco] and they were so supportive and nice, which made it easier, but I was so incredibly nervous. It’s also hard to get used to, ‘You get one take, you’ve got to move on, and you can’t obsess about what you could have done better.’ ”
Elizabeth Hendrickson (Chloe, Y&R)
“I don’t think memorization was ever a thing for me. I think it was more of just nerves. I was work- ing with some of the best soap actors on ALL MY CHILDREN, so I was very, very nervous. My first day [as Frankie] was with Susan Lucci [ex-Erica] and I was saying to myself, ‘Don’t mess up! Don’t mess up!’ I was working with these powerhouses and I just wanted to make them proud, so I think it was just the jitters.”
Johnny Wactor (Brando, GH)
“With most TV shows, you usually have some idea of what your char- acter’s arc is. With this medium, it’s kind of an eternal arc, and the storylines change so rapidly. It challenged my process for how I’ve prepared for every other role in any other medium. That was initially a big obstacle for me, but I’ve learned that you just kind of have to go with what you’ve got and really focus on being in the moment.”
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Katherine Kelly Lang (Brooke, B&B)
“Memorizing the lines. It gets easier as time goes on, but then it depends on the amount. It never gets ‘easy’, and now it seems to be getting harder again for me just because, I don’t know, maybe because I’ve done it for so long and now I’m forcing myself to study every night. But in the beginning, it was hard, too, because you are train- ing your brain to do something new. It’s a whole new routine, so that was the hardest thing starting on a soap.”
Photo credit: INSTAR IMAGES