In his three brief runs as Y&R’s Benjamin Hochman, Ben Hermes has gotten to play some pretty classic soapy moments. For his debut, he was half-naked for a steam room scene. “I assumed they’d have Hochman wearing expensive suits the whole time,” the actor chuckles. “Little did I know they’d be shooting out of sequence, so in my very first scene in my very first soap performance, I was in a different kind of suit ... my birthday suit. This was shot just two days after I was cast, so all I could do was hope for a decent-sized towel and flattering camera angles.” The second time around, Benjamin was a jerk to Ashley during their dinner date (“Getting the opportunity to work with Eileen Davidson was such a treat”), and Hermes’s most recent turn included a love scene with Amelia Heinle (Victoria). “Amelia made filming my very first love scene much less awkward than it could have been, considering we shot it just a couple of hours after we met,” he admits. “Luckily, her character takes the lead, which made it a little easier to ignore the bright lights and all the crew members watching us so I could focus on channeling The Hoch.”
B&B’s Jacqueline MacInnes Wood (Steffy) had a memorable time taping on location in Monte Carlo in June, but what truly made the excursion special for the actress was her traveling companion. “This year, I went to Monaco with my best friend, Ryanne, who I’ve known since I was in kindergarten,” Wood enthuses. “We had such a great time hanging out. She was actually in the show, too. You could see her in the background at the fashion challenge. I told her I was going to make a GIF out of it and constantly text her with it from now on so she’ll never forget it [laughs]. She came to all of the events with me, so we got to get all dressed up for all the parties and all my co-stars just loved her. We were constantly on the go and didn’t get a whole lot of sleep, but she just went with it. She’s a great traveler.”
When Lauren Koslow (Kate) learned that Lucas had fallen off the wagon on DAYS, it affected her on a couple of different levels. “I’m always happy to open a script and see that Bryan [R. Dattilo, Lucas] and I have scenes together,” shares Koslow. “I love how the relationship with Kate and Lucas has evolved over the years. In the early days, Lucas barely spoke to his mother. So I always enjoy going back and revisiting where they are now.” Meanwhile, Koslow praises the show for delving once more into Lucas’s addiction to alcohol. “I think it reflects what people go through every day,” she observes. “The fact that we’re going to get a chance to explore that again is great. And who better to play it than Bryan? He has done such a great job with that storyline, a man struggling with his demons. There is so much history with this story, and then you have Kate trying to figure out why this is happening to her son again. It’s a great story because it happens in families. There is definitely more to come.”
When Michael Sutton popped back in to GH to play Stone in scenes with Maurice Benard (Sonny), he was awash in memories of working with Benard during his 1993-95 run on the show. “There’s a lot of great stories between us,” he notes. “When I first started, I confided in him and said, ‘Listen, I’m brand-new, so if you take me under your wing, I promise you’ll never regret it, and by the time this storyline’s done, you’re going to be requesting scenes with me even though right now you might be hating having to work with me.’ He looked at me and took a pause and he was like, ‘All right, all right.’ He liked to know that I was committed that much, that I wanted to prove to be a worthy actor. And by the time I left, it came full circle. He came to me one day when the AIDS storyline was really sort of in full swing, and he said, ‘Well, it happened.’ I was like, ‘What happened, bro?’ He said, ‘Well, I just left the writers’ meeting because I was complaining they weren’t writing enough scenes with me and you, and you told me that would happen!’ That to me was such a prize, that the guy who had to teach me had kind of told me that I had gotten to where I wanted to be.”