Scene and Heard

B&B’s Thomas and Liam may not be friends on screen, but their portrayers had a great bonding experience when they took a camping trip to Joshua Tree National Park. Relays Matthew Atkinson (Thomas), “Scott [Clifton, Liam] and I both like camping and we had talked about doing it for months. Finally, I was like, ‘Let’s just do it, man.’ We wanted to do a minimalist sort of trip but that weekend wasn’t exactly the best weekend to do that,” he recalls with a laugh. “A winter storm was going through where I originally planned to take him, which was way off the grid. The storm would have meant 30-to-40-mile- an-hour winds with ice and snow. So, we decided to pick a different location and drove up to a place close to Big Bear that’s still off in the woods — but when we got there and talked to the rangers, they said the storm had changed and it was no longer going to be a couple of inches of snow, but a couple of feet. The ranger suggested trying near Joshua Tree. They were going to get some snow, but it wasn’t going to be that bad. So, we drove to Joshua Tree and it was amazing. It was an adventure getting there but once we did, it was the perfect little experience. And fortunately, a couple of weeks later, we were able to find the time and I was able to take Scott to the original place that I wanted us to go camping, way off in the middle of nowhere. So, we got both trips in!”

As GH’s Cyrus, Jeff Kober has had many occasions to be on the receiving end of Genie Francis’s (Laura) on-screen ire — and he considers it an honor. “I always look forward to the scenes I have with her,” he reports. “She wants to work, she wants to act, she wants to be alive and she’s like, ‘Yeah, come on! Get in my face!’ The scene where she slapped me because apparently, I might have been responsible for something that happened to her daughter [laughs], and I come to her and say, ‘If there’s anything I can do, just let me know,’ and she goes through about 20 different feelings in five seconds and then just hauls off and smacks me, it was like, ‘Oh, my God!’ It was so rich. I just really wanted to watch her instead of acting. I just thought, ‘Let me watch her do that again!’ It was so cool.”

Y&R’s Chelsea may not be able to speak but her portrayer, Melissa Claire Egan, still has a lot to say behind the scenes, which includes helping out scene partner Mark Grossman (Adam). “Mark and I are big on running lines over and over when we both have lines, but even though I don’t, I’ll still run his with him,” the actress shares. “We’ll go outside, where he talks and I blink. I love our scenes but sometimes I’m bummed that as Chelsea, I’m so mad at him because I love working with Mark, but we’re having fun telling this story.” The new story has given Egan side work when it comes to recording the voice-overs for what Chelsea is thinking. “That’s so much fun,” she enthuses. “We’re dark most Mondays, so every Tuesday, I bring all of my scripts for the week in and sit with Tony [Morina], our executive producer, and Dino, our amazing audio mixer. I usually don’t get to work with Tony one-on-one because he’s always running around making all of these huge decisions, so working with him closely has been great. I’ll try a line one way and he’ll say, ‘Try to sound a little more jealous or desperate or angry because she’s had enough.’ You usually don’t get to work directly with your executive producer and I really enjoy it. I love taking notes and trying certain ways and it’s been really interesting. It’s a pretty fast session and we get through it quickly but it’s fun because it’s such a different part of the job.”

Having wrapped her run as DAYS’s Jennifer, Cady McClain will miss spending time in Salem with Lauren Koslow (Kate). “What can I say about Lauren?” McClain begins. “She’s an inspiration in a lot of different ways, one of which is watching her find a way to navigate a show where she has done this character for so long and still find ways to express herself, express her creativity and not lose herself. It’s hard to do long-running roles, you know? When I was playing [ALL MY CHILDREN’s] Dixie, I finally figured out that every two years, I just had to pretend that it was a completely new character. I had to be like, ‘Clean slate! I don’t know who I am anymore. What’s happening? Okay, here we go!’ It’s hard to do! But she’s created a consistency and a cohesiveness with the character while still kind of express herself as an artist. And more than one woman I know has said, ‘Oh, my God, I love her style. I love what she wears. I love her outfits and her hair and her nails and her whole presentation of self!’ I think there’s a lot of creativity there, and that’s Lauren, that’s what she brings to the table, and I admire that, I really do.”