Marcus Coloma (Nikolas, GH) wa
GH’s Marcus (l.) got a kick out of his recent scenes with Maurice.
ecstatic to finally get to share scenes wit
Maurice Benard (Sonny). “It was so much fun,” he beams. “We were laughing so hard in between takes because my dressing room is right across from Maurice’s and right off the bat when I started working on the show, he was so friendly and nice and welcom- ing. We’d always run into each other in the halls and talk and he was so generous, just kind of telling me about the soap world and showing me the ropes. Our scenes were very confrontational, which was a strange thing for me because I look up to him in a lot of ways; he’s such a legend on the show. It was just so hard to keep a straight face! It was such a blast and so much fun working with him. It was a real treat. I can’t get wait to have more scenes with him!”
THEY’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS
Darin Brooks (Wyatt) was thrilled to watch B&B’s 2014 encore of its Parisian location shoot with wife Kelly Kruger (ex-Mackenzie, Y&R), since that was where he popped the question. “When they told me they were going to air those episodes, I was over-the- moon excited,” Brooks reports. “They were like, ‘Let’s shoot a little promo with it and tell us how you feel,’ and I was like, ‘Of course!’ That was one of the most magi- cal trips I have ever taken in my life. I remember going up to Brad’s [Bell, executive producer/head writer] office when we were going to shoot in Monte Carlo and I said, ‘I was just wondering if I could take a couple of days after because I was thinking about proposing,’ and Brad just looked at me and said, ‘Okay, well, let’s go shoot in Paris then. Let’s just pop over and shoot a couple of days there, too.’ And I was like, ‘Who does that? No one does that!’ But that’s just the kind of guy Brad is. He is so generous and so giving, and is all about creating memories. And now, to see those epi- sodes again with our daughter [Everleigh], it was truly an awesome, surreal, amazing experience.”
Once upon a time, Donny Boaz (Chance, Y&R) was adamant about not joining a soap. "I had zero attraction to daytime TV. Zero," recalls the actor. "The reason is because it's the hardest work in the business, it really is. The amount of dialogue you have to go through is mind-blowing. Just in my very brief experience on ALL MY CHILDREN [as a model]. I saw the people around me crank out this enormous amount of material every day. I got spoiled doing an episode every 10 days [on prime-time] and knocking out a movie in three months.” However, Boaz’s manager convinced him to try out for the part of Chance, and when he showed up for the audition, he was suddenly competitive. “I knew that I was testing against four other guys,” he shares. “I haven’t told this to anybody, but when I got to the parking lot, I was about 30 minutes early. They had five parking spots lined up with our names posted on them. I took my phone and took a screen shot of every single one of their names and looked them up on IMDb. I wanted to see who my competition was. I ended up knowing two of the guys, but I felt like I had a little bit of an edge on all of them. Luckily, everything worked out in my favor!”
All Tied Up
Kyle Lowder faced some new challenges when Sarah tied up his character, Rex, on DAYS. "It was interesting because I think people are kind of used to a certain way that they work when they shoot scenes," Lowder explains. "I pace around a lot in between the scenes, just kind of going over the dialogue in my head and feeling the space and then maybe glancing at the script one or two more times just to kind of solidify things. That being said, I had my hands tied behind my back sitting in a chair, so I couldn't really pace around, I couldn't pick up my script and look at it, so I had to make sure these lines were locked in my head. Just being fixed in a position for four hours was difficult, to say the least, but it was also very empowering. To be very grounded, I think, was very helpful because Rex's position with this particular story was to be the grounding presence amidst the chaos. I think it really helped with my performance because I didn't have the ability to pace around or be frantic or buy into Sarah's frantic-ness, if you will. The character of Sarah would freak out about something and then it would come back to me and I would have to sit there and look at her with literally a gag in my mouth, with my hands tied behind my back, and just have to respond without any words or any movement. It was kind of an actor's exercise at the same time. It was cool."
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