Arianne Zucker was totally on board when DAYS decided to revisit the Nicole and EJ relationship with Dan Feuerriegel. “I like those two characters [together], and I love when Ali’s [Sweeney, Sami] in the mix of it,” says Zucker. “We have a hoot together in everything we do. It’s a blast. I’m happy [the writers] still think of those relationships that have been here for so long. I love when they reflect back on things and give us a little bit of storyline. You never know when things will come around again.” Zucker had admired Feuerriegel long before they started sharing scenes together. “I saw Dan working on the feed and was like, ‘Wow! He is really, really good.’ I wanted to share that with him, because it’s hard to fill [another actor’s] shoes,” she says, referring to original EJ, James Scott. “I wanted this new person to feel as welcome as possible.” Aside from welcoming Feuerriegel, Zucker also offered up some advice. “At first I was like, ‘Whatever you do, just don’t read the negative comments, because unfortunately, there will be people who will share that they don’t like you. They will say things that are not nice, and that has nothing to do with you. That’s on them and how they feel,’ ” recounts Zucker. “Number two, I told him to just have a good time creating his EJ, and I feel like that’s what he’s done. He’s such a solid actor, and I love his intensity.”
Y&R’s Courtney Hope (Sally) attests that the sizzling hot sex scene between her character and Adam was anything but. “Love scenes are really technical and so far from romantic,” chuckles the actress. “There are so many things to be thinking about at the same time. It’s like, ‘Okay, you have to lay this way, now turn your body this way but make your head go that way.’ Then here are so many angles that they want to get but at the same time you want everything to look natural, which involves a lot of choreography. We had to figure out how we could maneuver over to the desk so my arm can hit the stapler a certain way to make it fly into an exact direction, but at the same time, do it while I’m in a tight skirt that I’m really self-conscious about because I don’t want an unintentional peep show. And it’s hard to be intimate when you have all these people from the crew watching.” And then there’s the damage control — or lack thereof. “I broke so many things in that scene!” Hope admits. “I broke a vase, a coffee mug and when we toasted with wine glasses, the stem of my glass broke off. When they handed me a champagne bottle, I asked, ‘Do you really want me to have this?’ ”
Parry Shen (Brad) and Kelly Thiebaud (Britt) had just as much fun as their characters when GH scripted a drunken Valentine’s Day outing for them to The Savoy. “There was a lot of improvisation just because of things that happened that were unexpected because of props falling, but it didn’t matter because it kind of worked in the scene,” recalls Shen. Nods Thiebaud, “There were a couple of funny bits in the Valentine’s Day episode that we didn’t talk about; these add-ons, they just naturally happened because we were both there, present and playing off each other.” For example, chuckles Shen, “There were these glitter hearts and I was trying to fill them up and do shots from them because Brad’s wasted and then Kelly grabbed a whole bunch and throws them into my face and I react. I remember Frank [Valentini, executive producer] was laughing and going, ‘Kelly, whose idea was that?’ ” Picks up Thiebaud, “Yeah, he was like, ‘Kelly, who told you to do that?’ and I was like, ‘Nobody told me to do that!’ There’s another part where I’m playing with this little heart wand or something and I see Carly and I instantly try to hide behind this heart wand. I mean, it’s really stupid drunk stuff. It was so fun!”
When ALL RISE returns to the airwaves on OWN after a two-season run on CBS, Y&R alum Wilson Bethel (ex-Ryder) assures that the central platonic friendship on the show between his character, Mark, and leading lady Simone Missick (Judge Lola) will stay intact. “We will see more of that, more of a deepening sense of how these friends take care of each other in ways that are not sexualized or, ‘Will they? Won’t they?’ or anything like that,” Bethel previews. “And, honestly, it’s been one of the great pleasures for me doing this show and getting to explore that relationship and working with Simone. So, I hope we just get to keep doing it and keep deepening their relationship. And just from a general storytelling perspective, I would add that because we are not having to engage in the tropes of, ‘Will they or won’t they?’ and the relationship dynamics that often drive these male-female relationships on TV, it means that we have a whole lot of time to explore different kinds of ways that relationships develop that are, quite frankly, I think more unique and interesting.”