GOOD HUMOR MAN
Whenever Tristan Rogers (Robert, GH) comes back to reprise Colin on Y&R, Jess Walton (Jill) knows she’s in for a good time. “That man makes me laugh so much,” says the actress. “Rehearsing with him can sometimes be a challenge. I have to keep telling him, ‘Please don’t say it like that because I’m going to laugh when I’m not supposed to in the story.’ But when we run lines, I usually end up laughing the whole time. He’s so great.” Walton can’t really describe exactly how Rogers induces giggles. “It’s hard to explain,” she shares. “He’ll slightly change the line, and even though it still means what the writers intended, the way he says it is so hilarious. But I had a fabulous time working with him even though it was only for two shows. I love Jill and Colin together, they’re so amusing. It’s not a forced thing with Tristan and me. It reminds me of the stuff Jeanne [Cooper, ex-Katherine] and I used to do. How our characters interacted naturally made people laugh.”
CLOSE TO YOU
Wally Kurth (Justin, DAYS) has enjoyed the chance to work more closely with Mary Beth Evans (Kayla). Before the time jump, he notes, “Mary Beth and I, we’d just say hello and laugh at each other’s jokes in the makeup room. But when you start working with somebody, especially when it’s emotional stuff and we have to get into the heart of the matter, we get together to run lines in our dressing rooms and you really get to know each other. You have to trust one another and you also have to really like each other. I think we genuinely really like each other. We laugh at each other’s jokes. There’s a real connection in that way.” Though they had a brief on-screen marriage on GH as Ned and Katherine, “We didn’t really get to explore the romantic stuff that much; on DAYS, we’re definitely doing more of a love story than what we played out [before]. I think because we’ve known each other for so long and we’ve been friends for so long, it was fun for the two of us to really explore that for the first time because when you play these love stories on television, you really do psychically go there.”
BEFORE THEY WERE FAMOUS
Growing up in her native Boston, B&B’s Annika Noelle (Hope) was very interested in the arts, a passion that was fostered by two very important theater companies in her life. “I grew up going to the Boston Ballet because I originally wanted to be a ballerina,” Noelle recalls. “I love the Boston Ballet, and going to see The Nutcracker every year was a family holiday tradition. I also got involved with the Concord Youth Theatre and did a couple of productions there. It was actually run by Chris Evans and Scott Evans’s [ex-Oliver, ONE LIFE TO LIVE] mother, Lisa. So, I did a couple of productions with her directing, and I believe Scott was The Cowardly Lion in our rendition of The Wizard of Oz. I was the actual Yellow Brick Road itself — and the Tornado! Yes, I was part-Tornado, part-Yellow Brick Road, and I was also a Tree. That was one of the very first actual productions I was in. It was so much fun and it really encouraged my love of acting.”
DISORDER IN THE COURT
Steve Burton (Jason, GH) had a tough time keeping it together when his character took the stand at the hearing to determine “Drew’s” mental competence. “It was me, Michael E. Knight [Martin] and Kin Shriner [Scott],” he sets up. “Jason was on the stand and Kin was in front of me and was asking me questions. He makes up lines and just throws stuff out all the time to try get a reaction out of people, and Michael Knight almost lost it, like, he’s just dying laughing. No one could see him but me because I was staring straight at him. I was close to losing it and he was already losing it. And then Kin’s doing his thing and I’m trying so hard not to laugh, like, ‘Come on, dude. What are you doing?’ ” To save the scene, he relied on his go-to method: pain infliction. “There are little tricks that I have to use, and pain is the first thing,” Burton explains. “You’ve got to really pinch yourself hard, like, to the point where you want to punch yourself because it hurts so much, or you just have to think of really bad things. Maurice [Benard, Sonny] taught me all those things, so blame him!”