Scene and Heard

Michael E. Knight (Martin, GH) was delighted that the show scripted an on-air cross between his character and Jackie, played by Kim Delaney; the pair got their daytime start together playing ALL MY CHILDREN siblings Tad and Jenny in the early 1980s. “It was awesome! Awesome, awesome, awesome,” he declares. “What’s odd about it is how great she looks, and I’m not kidding. I aired in ’83, but we met in December of ’82, so you’re talking about 40 years, and Kimmy is still sharp as a tack, she’s wonderful, and I had a ball with her, I really did. We did a day together where we were on a stakeout [as their characters tried to track down Martin’s mother, Florence] and my 82-year-old dad, who has always had a crush on her, he calls me up and he goes, ‘Oh, I saw the thing in the car. It was great! You guys had real chemistry! Are they going to throw you together?’ And my reaction was, ‘No, that’s my sister, ew!’ Which absolutely makes no sense [laughs]. I mean, I should be so lucky, but it’s weird about what sticks in your mind after all these years!”

You can count Richard Burgi (Ashland, Y&R) as a fan of Amelia Heinle (Victoria). “I’ve worked with a lot of incredible actresses and I put her up there with the best,” he declares. “I’ve never had so much fun. She’s delightful. She has a great sense of humor and makes me laugh. We spend time together and we both just love laughing because life is crazy. She’s such a wonderful human being and an amazing actress. And this is a girl who’s never studied acting, so she’s not some vanguard institution. She’s a great artist in so many ways, how she lives her life and how she’s faced the difficulties and challenges along the way. I love her on screen and I love her off screen.” Burgi believes fate brought him and his character’s latest romantic partner together. “I had a couple of prime-time projects lined up that fell through because of Covid but I have to say, I love daytime and the challenge of it,” he explains. “I was only supposed to do nine episodes on Y&R, so the last thing I expected to happen was to find such a sweet person to work with when I came on. I have such admiration for God, Mother Nature and the writers for conspiring to put me with Amelia.”

Diamond White (Paris) has become pals with many of her B&B co-stars — but she and Jennifer Gareis (Donna) have become fast friends. “I love her,” Gareis enthuses. “She is so young and so fresh and so talented. I love the way she carries herself and her sense of style. She’s just so amazing. I wish I could come back in another life as her. She is just so cool. She is everything I wish I could be. She’s adorable.” Gareis adds that with Covid restrictions lifting, they are enjoying getting together outside the studio, but would like to see them hang out on screen, as well. “Oh, my gosh, that would so great to do IRL [in real life]. By the way, I’m trying to be hip saying IRL, which I picked up from my 10-year-old. I have a far way to go [laughs]. Maybe by hanging out with Diamond and the girls more, my kids will think I’m cool, or at least getting there!”

George DelHoyo admits he never expected to get the call to return to DAYS as Orpheus in 2016. “My original days on DAYS [from 1986-87] were a big, ongoing storyline and I got that job soon after my first child, Alexandra, was born,” he recalls. “I was very grateful because I thought, ‘This is great, I just had a baby and I have this nice chunk of work for a while.’ And then, at the end of that run, Orpheus was shot on the island and I thought, ‘Well, that’s it. That’s the end of it.’ So then all these years pass and I did a lot of different things and I spent a large part of time working in voice-over. And then I get a phone call from my manager and she says, ‘Are you seated?’ and I said, ‘No. Can you just tell me what you want to tell me?’ And she said, ‘Well, DAYS OF OUR LIVES wants to bring Orpheus back and they want to know if you’re interested.’ And I said, ‘Orpheus? I died on an island.’ And she said, ‘Well it’s the magic and imagination of daytime. They can do anything. They can bring him back.’ And I said, ‘Wow, well that sounds fantastic.’ So I was thrilled to go back and revisit it and still am happy to do it. And it was great to see people I hadn’t seen in so long like Drake [Hogestyn, John] and Deidre [Hall, Marlena] and Stephen [Nichols, Steve] and Wally [Kurth, Justin] and Mary Beth [Evans, Kayla] and all these people that I had grown quite fond of years ago. They welcomed me as if I’d been gone for a long weekend. They were just great.”