HIT PARADE
That recent catfight be-tween Y&R’s Summer and Abby may have looked vicious, but according to Hunter King (Summer), the skirmish was instead a hilarious exercise for her and real-life pal Melissa Ordway (Abby). “Even when we knew that we were having a fight, we started laughing,” chuckles the actress. “We just know ourselves. Any time we have a scene together and it ends with us looking at each other in an angry way, we can’t do it in rehearsal, one of us is always breaking. We’re so close, it’s funny to see one of us upset at each other.” To that end, the two co-stars were determined to get the funny out their systems while prepping for the scene. “We laughed the entire time that we were doing it,” says King. “Camryn Grimes [Mariah] gave us a few tips because she’s done these things before and all three of us were cracking up for at least five minutes.” However, when it was time to execute the action in front of the camera, King reports, “Everything went according to plan and those scenes were so much fun to shoot. Melissa is a champion, she’s a trouper. We’re both so incredibly klutzy, but I think we looked pretty dang believable.”
GETTING SOCIAL
Robin Strasser (Vivian, DAYS) enjoys interacting with her fans. “I used to have a hotline, which was a phone number where I would make recordings,” she explains. “The fans would call. Back in 2011, my hotline crashed. There were so many fans calling in that I not only crashed my phone line but the whole answering service that hosted it. They asked me to please take it somewhere else. I was with my oldest son, Nick, and he said, ‘You should be on Twitter. It’s immediate, it’s fast, it’s about controversy. I’m gonna put you on Twitter.’ I write the tweets fairly carefully. I love the little counter that tells you how many letters you still have left.” Strasser is aware of the power of her words. “My mistakes have been when I revealed a secret that somebody didn’t tell me was a secret,” she notes. “But I love it because it is a very immediate way to stay in touch at this moment. I don’t follow anybody else, I don’t build my audience, I don’t do anything about how to get my numbers larger. I would get confused. Here’s a cute thing: My fans, besides being die-hard soap fans, we’re dog and cat people, too. They all know my dog, Rocket.My first or second or third day in the makeup room, one of the pretty young actresses said, ‘Can I photograph your dog?’ So she just took some video of Rocket in the makeup room and put it on social media. Apparently all the fans went, ‘Robin Strasser is in Burbank because that’s Rocket!’ Never underestimate your audience. You cannot go wrong if you respect the audience.”
SOAK IT UP
When GH’s Brad pushed Obrecht overboard at the Franco/Liz wedding reception on The Haunted Star, and Curtis snapped to action to take part in her rescue, his portrayer, Donnell Turner, had to be hosed down on set to appear appropriately drenched. “Silly me,” he chuckles. “I thought there was going to be a tank with water to jump in!” He explains that, in actuality, “You stand backstage on these mats. They come out with a tank and a little hose and then they squeeze the little lever and aim the hose at you and water comes out. You gotta stand there and get wet in sections. It’s a lengthy process. And then they had to add the fake fog, so they have smoke, and they have a fan blowing it. So you have on wet clothes and then a fan blowing at you. It’s not fun, but I’m not complaining. When they yell, ‘Cut,’ I’ll have some wardrobe people come in with the heaviest cloak, the biggest robe you can imagine. I heard I looked like [everyone] from the Phantom of the Opera to James Brown!”
MY LITTLE CO-STAR
Though B&B’s Scott Clifton (Liam) did standout work during the baby Beth reveal, he gives credit to another performer. “It’s not about me,” Clifton insists. “There is one little actress, who weighs about 30 pounds, who does amazing work in those scenes, and I am not joking. I really enjoy the days that we work with the babies, and I’m not that guy who fawns over babies. We have two little girls who play Phoebe/Beth and they do switch: Madeline [Valdez], who’s probably 8 months or so, and River [Davidson], who’s around the same age. They’re both really adorable, but Madeline is the one I worked with most during this storyline and the girl is unreal. She does something unpredictable and interesting in every scene. What I love about working with the babies is that they don’t know they’re acting. They’re just being themselves, and that forces us, the actors, to be present. We have to be reactive to them, because that’s what you would do as a parent. So, the scene never goes the way I think it’s going to go, and there’s something really exciting about that. During that epic pivotal scene where Liam realizes Phoebe is Beth, Madeline was just amazing! She makes every scene that she’s in.”