“Frank [Valentini, executive producer] said to me recently, ‘You’ve been pregnant for 13 months’ — and it’s felt like longer!” teases Kirsten Storms, whose GH alter ego, Maxie, has been carrying her unborn child, Louise, since early 2020. “I am so ready for this baby to get here. I just hope I don’t deliver it on the side of the road again [as she did with her son, James]. The padding for the belly is so thick and then I have to wear, like, a Spanx bodysuit to hold it in place, and then [Maxie’s] winter clothes and it’s like 75 or 80 degrees in Los Angeles — I am constantly warm on set. I am ready for that to be over, too!” While Maxie may seem like an unlikely candidate to be a mom of three, Storms chuckles, “It doesn’t really feel like three because we don’t see the kids — ever [laughs]. Look, I’d rather not see them than have them come back and be, like, 12 or 13! That’s going to get me, when they do that to me. I know that day is coming!”
Patrika Darbo shares that her late grandmother would be thrilled that she’s now appearing on Y&R as Shirley Spectra. “My grandmother was a huge Y&R fan and in fact, I’m sure she’s looking down, going, ‘My granddaughter’s on my story! I’ve gotta get out of here!’ and try to climb out of her coffin,” the actress chuckles. “Just to give you an idea, 25 years ago, my husband I were visiting her in Janesville, Wisconsin, and we wanted to take her out to lunch and she said, ‘Oh, I can’t go out now, my story is on,’ which was YOUNG AND RESTLESS. While she was watching, my husband went to the store, bought a VCR, hooked it up and showed her how it worked. I said, ‘Now Grandma, you can go anywhere and you won’t miss your story. You can come back and watch it later.’ The next day, we came back to take her out to lunch, and she said no because she wanted to make sure the VCR would work!” Darbo laments that Grandma never got to see her work in daytime. “She passed away in April of 1998 at the age of 101, and I started on DAYS [as Nancy] the following May,” she notes. “I’m sure she was looking down after I was on DAYS and even on BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL, and was saying, ‘When the hell are you going to be on YOUNG AND RESTLESS?!’ ”
Photo credit: Matt Sayles/Invision/AP/Shutterstock
DAYS’s Emily O’Brien (Gwen) wasn’t sure what to expect when she saw that her pregnant alter ego would be getting sick in the Horton living room. “In my mind, I thought it was going to be this projectile vomiting thing all over the place but it was a bit more calm than that,” she says. “They were so considerate and even asked me what protein shake flavor I would like to throw up. That was good fun.” Doing emotional scenes with Marci Miller (Abigail) while Miller was pregnant was a slight challenge, reports O’Brien. “I kept asking her, ‘How do you feel?’ because I don’t know what it’s like to be pregnant — I’ve never had a child — and there were some very intense, emotional scenes regarding the baby and the decisions with the baby, and what was happening physically and emotionally, and Marci was just so emotionally available because she’s really pregnant,” O’Brien explains. “I could see that it was a lot. I think we were doing a scene and she didn’t even necessarily need to get emotional. She said, ‘It’s so hard for me to get through this without crying.’ She was choking up constantly.” DAYS
B&B’s Katherine Kelly Lang (Brooke) notes that there are noticeable differences from when she started on the soap 34 years ago. “I wish we still had time to do bigger shows,” she says. “We just don’t have the time now. Everything moves so fast now, and they move the sets. I wish we still had some of the sets that we used to have that would add in different storylines and different locations. I do miss that a lot. I miss getting out and doing remotes. Mostly because of Covid, we feel like we’re stuck, so that might be a while. But I always think that shooting on location is spectacular because it gives something fun for the fans to look at. It’s like we take them on this journey with us, and that’s really exciting. I’m sure we’ll get back to it but for the time being, I do miss it. I miss the glamour. B&B was so much about the fashion and that’s kind of toned down a little bit. I’m sure it will come and go, depending on certain storylines, but it’s not as big a part as it used to be.”
Photo credit: Gilles Toucas/Courtesy Of Bell-Phillip Television Inc