Scene And Heard

LEARN FROM THE BEST Briana Nicole Henry (Jordan, GH) cut her teeth in soaps with a short 2014 run as Y&R’s Esmerelda. “It was super-fun,” she says, “but I just remembered being so terrified. It was my first professional job, and soaps move fast! You’re being asked to memorize so much dialogue in such a short amount of time. When I originally got the role, I was supposed to be a guest star, and they loved the craziness that Esmerelda was able to bring to the show for a while, so I ended up being able to record 16 episodes with them, which I think was [stretched out over] about six months.” She credits Bryton James (Devon) with showing her the ropes. “I remember meeting Bryton on my first day on the show. He was my love interest, and I think we had to, like, make out passionately and it was the first time I had ever met him and we were filming in a towel. I was like, ‘Hi, I’m Briana!’ He made me feel so safe and so taken care of. It was a really wonderful introduction into having a love interest on a show. He helped make it the great experience that it was.”

BACK TALK “It was a little bit of revisionist history,” winks Y&R’s Joshua Morrow (Nick) of the recorded conversation Sharon heard between Nick and Victor discussing J.T.’s murder. Since the men didn’t have the actual chat on camera, an audio version had to be created. “It wasn’t tricky at all,” shares the actor. “In the past, we would go into a sound booth to make a recording, but we just did it right on the set. They just pulled the boom mic down, everybody had to be super-quiet and Eric [Braeden, Victor] and I did it from there. It wasn’t difficult to do at all, so we knocked it out of the park.” Well, on the second try. “We had to do it in two takes because in the first one, Eric was laughing,” Morrow explains. “I don’t know what got him started, but that killed the first take. Man, he’s a big goofball. People just don’t know the kind of sense of humor he really has because Victor is so serious. I always have a good time when I’m working with Eric.”

GRAY AREA  Soap icon Linda Gray (ex-Sue Ellen, DALLAS; ex-Priscilla, B&B et al) is glad to see that the stigma sometimes associated with soaps has disappeared. “I never thought of the word ‘soap’ as a bad thing,” Gray relays. “Just look at the telenovelas. They’re all telling a story and they’re all entertaining, so for me to categorize shows like that is not necessary. It should be categorized as entertainment. I know when DALLAS started [in 1978], a lot of men didn’t watch because they thought it was a soap opera, and it was for women, and they glazed over and rolled their eyes. But the thing that happened, in my estimation, was when they saw the men like J.R. [the late Larry Hagman] doing these really crazy business deals and conniving and all of that outrageous stuff, they started watching because they were like ‘Wow!’ They started tiptoeing in the living room and were like, ‘That sounds like my boss,’ or “That sounds like me!’ or ‘I had an uncle like that.’ It started conversation, and I feel like that’s what it’s all about. It’s all about conversation. If you see a great movie, you want to share it with someone. That’s what I love. Well, these days, you can call it a soap and enjoy the conversation — no harm, no foul.”

YOU AGAIN! Working with Judith Chapman (Diana) again as mother and son on DAYS has been “an absolute dream,” says Greg Rikaart (Leo). “We got thrown right into this complicated, layered family dynamic. Not that it’s the same scenario that we’ve played before [as Gloria and Kevin on Y&R], but there is such history between the two of us, and a lot of love and respect. I think we both feel safe around one another. So there was none of that, ‘Let’s sort of get to know each other a little bit.’ We just got to dive right into it.” The twosome enjoy having such meaty material, again. “We got to do some really great stuff together at Y&R back in the day,” notes Rikaart. “But it had been a while since we really got to stretch the muscles and get really wonderfully conflicting material where we had to challenge each other and go at it.” Rikaart didn’t even mind Chapman’s fiery intro scene, where she slapped him. “It was in the script, although I’m sure she’s been wanting to do that for years,” he chuckles. “Leo was trying to tell her what’s what and she not so gently reminded him who the parent was here.”