James Patrick Stuart (Valentin) is pleased that Roger Howarth’s new GH character, Austin, is in his on-screen orbit far more than his last one, Franco. “Roger can be across the room and I’ll catch him looking at me and it’s as if there’s no space between us. I don’t have that with arguably anybody on that set except for him — he has this ability to just leap into your space from 30 feet away, which is part of his strength!” When they started working together more, Stuart was in for a surprise. “I’m sure people think Roger improvises. I was one of those people who thought he did. When I finally got a chance to work with him, I went, ‘Oh, my God, no! He just has a way of making it sound that way!’ He just makes it feel so genuine, so spontaneous and so sarcastic and snide, and it’s all on the page. That’s the amazing thing. Whatever he’s doing is all happening behind the words. It’s speaking so much louder than the words that you think it’s just coming from him. He’s a lot of fun! And I’ve actually found myself talking to him off the set, which is not something I usually do with anybody [laughs]!”
While in pre-production on the next season of his Emmy Award-winning digital series STUDIO CITY, soap alum Sean Kanan (ex-Deacon, B&B, et al) is busy promoting his third book, Way Of The Cobra. The tome not only capitalizes on his days playing bad guy Mike Barnes in Karate Kid III but as Kanan notes, it’s much more personal than that. “I have been able in my life to resurrect myself from the ashes a couple of times, and I’ve learned some unique strategies to do this,” he shares. “I’ve had some fairly significant success, and a few epic and often well-publicized failures, and one day I was looking in the mirror going, ‘What’s next? What’s your Act Two?’ and rather than wait for my ship to come in, I was going to build the damn ship. So, I started doing things differently, and I started having significant, positive effects from that. With the incredible success of COBRA KAI [on Netflix], I revisited what I’d been working on and realized if I’m the sensei and you’re a student of my dojo that I would get a lot more people interested, and it worked. I believe with every cell in my body that this book has the ability to be transformative. I’m super-proud of it, and it’s a fun read.” For more info, check out www.wayofthecobra.com.