Scene And Heard

THE NAKED TRUTH When GH’s Kiki and Griffin had drunken sex after the Nurses’ Ball, Hayley Erin (Kiki) had to share atypically intimate scenes with co-star Matt Cohen (Griffin). “I adore Matt and he’s a consummate gentleman. It wasn’t as awkward as it could have been,” Erin reports. “If I had to pick anyone on the show to be in that situation with, I think I would pick Matt; he’s a really great guy and I consider him a friend, which really does help. Much like my relationship with Robert Palmer Watkins [ex-Dillon], we had at least a year of friendship under our belt before we ever had any sort of romantic entanglement on the show, and I think that helps you play it better, because there isn’t that unspoken uncomfortable feeling; you’re not thinking, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be doing this with this person.’ It’s interesting; Bryan Craig [ex-Morgan] is a nice guy, but I didn’t know him when I started on the show and our characters were together, so it’s been really different for me every time [she’s shot a love scene]. It’s a weird part of the job, you know? That’s what I said to Matt when we were in bed together. I was like, ‘We have the strangest job in the world!’ Mentally, you’re acting, but physically, your bodies are there in the bed!”

SPECIAL DELIVERY Having gone through the birth of his 2-year-old son, Ford, with wife Nikki, B&B’s Scott Clifton (Liam) describes playing Steffy’s labor scenes as surreal. “I think the fictional birth was more difficult for me because I found myself ‘mansplaining’ while we filmed them,” he chuckles. “I was kind of coaching Jacqui [MacInnes Wood, Steffy] by saying, ‘These contractions feel more like this, and later on when you’re pushing, it’s a different kind of pain and it’s going to feel like this.’ At one point, the women on set looked at me and raised an eyebrow and were like, ‘What are you doing? How can you say that?’ and I was like, ‘Hey, I’m not saying I’ve given birth — but all of this has been described to me in more detail than I would ever want to know by my own wife, so I’m just imparting what I know of the experience.’ It was pretty funny. After, I was telling Jacqui that I have more anxiety now dealing with these babies than if I never had a baby of my own. They’re actually triplets — two boys and a girl — and I’ve forgotten how to handle a newborn versus a 6-month-old versus a 2-year-old. It’s all blurring together for me. It’s like my brain has turned to mush now from being a parent!”

HAPPY RETIREMENT Though Jaime Lyn Bauer enjoyed her visits as DAYS’s Laura and Y&R’s Lorie, she isn’t actively pursuing acting gigs. “I’ve finally retired,” she says. “I’ve moved to a little beach town up from Malibu and I’m loving it! I’m loving not having the traffic, I’m loving the ocean air and seeing the ocean every day and really starting to unwind and enjoy myself. I think the last time my agent called, it was like two years ago, and I had my hands full with the children and they wanted me for an interview at Fox, I think it was. It was a 4 o’clock audition on a Friday. I really had to think about it and I just went, ‘You know, I don’t think I want to do it.’ My husband has taken early retirement and so he’s with me now, and I think it’s just time for us to start having fun. The two characters that I play on Y&R and on DAYS are fun, they’re wonderful characters. But am I going to go out and look for other roles? No. If somebody wants to find me, they’ll find me and then I’ll look at what they’re offering. I’ve just decided at my age I’m just kind of past it. It’s not important to me; what’s important to me are people and my relationships and my kids and my grandchildren and my friends.”

SETTING PRETTY As a longtime Y&R viewer before she even joined the show in 2013, Mishael Morgan (Hilary), who will soon be leaving the soap, was in awe throughout her run that she got to spend her days in Genoa City. On Digest’s Dishing With Digest podcast, she revealed, “Every now and then, and it happened yesterday, it hits me. Yesterday, I was filming with Christel [Khalil, Lily] and I got this moment in my head of, ‘I remember watching this girl and now I’m in the TV with her!’ It was completely surreal.” Victor, Michael, Phyllis and Jill were some of Morgan’s favorite characters to follow, but when it came to romantic twosomes, Nick and Sharon were the couple to watch. Which is why Morgan was gobsmacked on her first day of work when she was introduced to their portrayers, Joshua Morrow and Sharon Case. “It was weird just meeting them because they looked exactly the same off camera, so it was kind of crazy,” she recalls. “Then I walked through the sets and that was the most surreal [experience]. They shoot on two stages, so I walked through the stage they weren’t shooting and the GCAC was there and some of these iconic sets and I was like, ‘This is so crazy that I’m here.’ Now it’s five years later, and I’m on those sets every day!” (To hear this podcast and more, go to iTunes, Google Play or soapoperadigest.com.)