THREE’S COMPANY
DAYS’s Mary Beth Evans (Kayla) is enjoying her alter ego mixing it up with both Wally Kurth (Justin) and Stephen Nichols (“Stefano”). “This whole journey has been so interesting,” she notes. “When they did the time jump and Wally and I were all of a sudden in a relationship ... He and I have known each other 100 years. So that was funny and fun. I almost felt guilty playing that relationship with him, because of Stephen. It was weird, but Wally and I have had the best time with it. We just committed to the story. There’s some great stuff that’s been written, and Stephen has done an amazing job with something that was very difficult to take on — the part [of Stefano]. Stephen’s a great actor and he just gives it his all. He really worked hard on it. I love him as a friend, and I was so sad when he wasn’t there. And I’m so happy to have him back.” When Nichols returned, however, Evans didn’t see a lot of him. “It was weird when he first came back, because our paths didn’t cross that much,” she recalls. “We wouldn’t even see each other, even though we were both there. When you’re in the same storyline, you’re in each other’s dressing rooms and hanging out and running lines. Now we’re in the same building together and we’re not even hanging together, which is kind of weird.”
MY GIRLS
Freddie Smith (Sonny, DAYS) admits he was sad see Harper and Sydnee Udell (ex-Ariana) exit the canvas. “It was really hard to say good-bye to the twins because we grew up with them since they were six months old,” he explains. “We watched them blossom into little young women and it was incredible. Their family is so nice. But they aged up the character so you can’t magically make the twins 10 years old. They had to recast, but they recast a wonderful actress. The transition went very well. I’m happy for everyone and I wish the Udell family the best. Hopefully, they’ll be back one day. But we stay in touch so I’m really excited just to see these girls grow up and accomplish whatever they want to accomplish in life because they deserve it.” As for the new actress, Sydney Brower, Smith has worked to forge a bond with her. “When we run lines we introduce ourselves and we try to spend as much time as we can, but there isn’t really much time to spend. Within a 10-minute meet and greet, you kind of have to develop a relationship that you had a 10-year-old daughter for all these years. I think we did a really good job of it. We got together. We’re really comfortable. We’re cracking jokes. Everyone seems to have fallen right into place. It’s gonna play really well.”
WELCOME TO THE CLUB
Marcus Coloma (Nikolas, GH) has found it easy to connect with his new castmates. “Genie [Francis, Laura] is so lovely,” he begins. “It was really great getting to meet her because you never know how these people that you’ve seen on TV or whatever are going to be. She was just the best. She’s just such an open-armed, warm person. Maura West [Ava], I had watched both her and Genie before and I just think they’re both such talented actresses. Maura is amazing as a scene partner, super-easy to work across because she’s so good. Maura just commits so fully and brings so much to a scene with so many different levels where one minute she’s crying and the next minute she’s laughing. It’s so dynamic. She pumps so much life into her work that I find it’s just so compelling to watch. My first day with a lot of dialogue, I was super-nervous, and Ingo [Rademacher, Jax] and Rebecca [Budig, ex-Hayden] really took me under their wing and really kind of gave me their viewpoint of the world. They were just super-helpful. I was just blown away by how well they performed and how many layers they brought to their performances. It was really fun working with them.”
Photo credit: Collins Stark
GAME ON
As a longtime fan of THE PRICE IS RIGHT, Melissa Ordway (Abby, Y&R) is always thrilled to make appearances on the game show as a guest model. “It’s so fun, but it’s harder than it looks,” the actress enthuses. “If you’re not there all of the time, you have to figure out, ‘Okay, how do you play this game? What do I do?’ Because I don’t want to mess up and accidentally give away a car. So it can be a little stressful, but it’s so much fun. I grew up watching the show with my grammy. Every time I’m there I feel her presence in the audience.” A self-confessed klutz, who’s taken numerous spills at Y&R, Ordway reports, “Thankfully, I haven’t fallen all the way down at PRICE IS RIGHT, but I’m sure I tripped. Thank God that they do pickups over there because I’m really bad at flipping signs. I’ll flip it too hard and it’ll bounce back. Let’s just say I’m no [PRICE model] Rachel Reynolds. She’s so graceful. She’s like a real-life Barbie doll. Every time I go there I watch everything that she does, trying to be like her — I’m just not as coordinated as her.”