Y&R's Doug Davidson (Paul) Looks Back On His Genoa City Stories

BECOMING A FATHER/ INFILTRATING THE MOB, 1980-83: These storylines really helped transition Paul from irresponsible teen to admired adult. “Yeah, the transition from this bad guy out for himself started with April pressuring Paul to take responsibility [for their daughter, Heather]. Then the baby got sick and in the Roman Catholic belief, if the baby doesn’t have a name it doesn’t fare well in the great beyond, so they got married. Paul became the guy taking responsibility, but he didn’t go to good guy yet. That occupied my first couple of years when the show went to an hour.” Did you appreciate being front and center in storylines? “I just knew I was working a lot. I didn’t recognize at the time how hard it was to write a daytime drama. All the things that [Co-Creator/then-Head Writer] Bill Bell put into this situation were so dramatically fertile. When you watch some of these old episodes, you can see that he had eight things going on, not two. It was a bad boy complication, suddenly you had a baby in the mix, the baby got sick and it was a Roman Catholic complication. It was like a tsunami of drama, but relatable to the viewership.” Did Bill tell you what he had mapped out for Paul? “Oh, no, he’d never tell anyone. I was so trained by him not to ask or make a judgment or even project. In my quietest moments, I would never guess what he would have planned. There were 24 major characters that he was weaving together. There were also many off-screen things that he had to deal with that nobody knew about. It’s really an incredibly complicated job he had. The older I get, the more respect I have for him. I mean, my only [solace] is that I was able to tell him before he passed. So, the story with April was such a huge transition for Paul, and the next one, of course, would be the mob.” When Paul went undercover to clear his cop dad, did you like the mob storyline? “It was different than the usual relationship stuff. Once again, it was so full of drama because Paul couldn’t tell anyone what he was doing. He had to essentially betray his entire family in order to get in with those guys. I don’t think GH was doing a mob story then.” What do you remember most about that part of the story? “I grew a beard for it and Bill hated the beard [laughs]. I thought people that go through major emotional traumas change, whatever. He hated it so much that at the conclusion of the story he had me shave it off on camera! Cindy Lake, the prostitute Paul fell in love with, stepped in front of the bullet meant for him and died.”

THE CASSANDRA RAWLINS LOVE STORY, 1988-90: You’ve said many times that this was one of your favorite stories. Why is that? “So much went into it. Bill had new sets built and brought in a new mystery woman. There was great chemistry between me and Nina Arvesen [ex-Cassandra]; Bill took that and ran with it! That was another big transition that suddenly took Paul from younger leading man to leading man.” Did you like the challenge of playing such a dramatic change for Paul? “As I see some of my performances, there’s even a transition in me, Doug, going from a boy-man into a man-man. I became a father during that time and the show went to No. 1 [in the Nielsen ratings] and I had the highest TVQ for a couple of years running. It was a huge transition for me personally and for the character as well. I remember ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT, which didn’t go to everybody’s house, came out to talk to me about the show going to No. 1.”

PAUL AND CHRISTINE FIND LOVE, 1993-96: Paul and Christine falling in love didn’t happen overnight. “Bill spent four years building a relationship for Paul and Christine. In real life, Michael Damian [ex-Danny] got Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on Broadway and if you recall, Danny and Cricket were together at the time. While Michael was gone, Bill was stuck with what to do romantically with either one of us. He ended up making us work together. Christine was a lawyer and Paul was an investigator and we were helping these elderly people deal with a slumlord.” Did the fan reaction to the story arc surprise you? “I think what was incredibly interesting to me was how popular that story became because we had a bunch of older characters and they were played by very charming and adept actors. I think our audience was able to connect to them as relatives. The young people helping the older people, I think it was a lot more popular than anyone anticipated.” After that it still took a while before those two admitted their feelings for each other. “It was certainly a slow build, and by the time it took place it was believable because Danny had been gone for a while and Paul and Chris were working so closely together. They weren’t just thrown together. I’m even trying to remember their first kiss. It could have been a couple years into it and it was awhile before they got married. And then there was another curveball....”

GETTING INVOLVED WITH ISABELLA, 2001-03: Was this storyline started by Bill Bell? “Yes, he was teetering on retirement. I thought it was very clever. He dangled this little sexpot and it was by design. It wasn’t like he went to a bar and met her by accident. Michael had hired her to split up Paul and Chris. I remember I had to peel away floorboards to find a magazine ad where she was advertising her services.” Paul went ballistic when he found this out. What was that like to play? “It actually was hard to do, but it was one of the most fun [scenes] I had because it was total and complete fury. Isabella is just pressing his buttons. ‘Well, you’re not going to get a divorce from me. Not anytime soon.’ I’m packing up things and it explodes into Paul throwing boxes at the door and he’s furious. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever been as angry acting-wise as in that scene. It was complete losing it in terms of exploding in anger.” How did you like working with Eva Longoria (ex-Isabella)? “She was great. She was so new to the whole thing. She had worked in a temp agency or something like that. Within five years, she was a superstar. After she left Y&R, she got a series right away. I think it was DRAGNET and then she got another series, DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES.”

KILLING RICKY, 2012: Did you like this story? “I would put the Ricky storyline in my top two because that culminated in an Emmy [for Outstanding Lead Actor]. That was full of drama, too. I think my work was so much more refined by the time we got to this story.” Was this story originally supposed to be so dark? “I don’t think so. They screen-tested Rickys and they knew where they were going. I think it changed because they kept getting a weird vibe from the actor Peter Porte [ex-Ricky], but that was a Bill[-like] trait because he would pick up on innate things in people’s personalities and then write for them like he did with me, Mel [Thomas Scott, Nikki], [the late] Jeanne [Cooper, ex-Katherine] and Eric [Braeden, Victor]. It was fascinating how he knew us and our dark corners.” What was your reaction when you heard Paul would be responsible for his son’s death? “It had been an extreme dry period for me, so I was happy just to get a story.” Do you remember when the plot took an ominous turn? “[The writers] were dropping a little crumb every now and then where Paul begins to doubt his son and he’s not being honest. In trying to protect someone else from Ricky, Paul shoots his son. Paul’s fatherhood was overridden with what’s the right thing to do. Then Paul does stuff that’s later held against him, like when Avery saw Paul slam someone up in the bar, opening the hotel room without a warrant and the gun that he used against Ricky was stolen. They made the shooting seem premeditated.” What was it like to play Paul’s horror over killing Ricky? “It was really a wonderful scene. It was me sitting on the bed, holding a gun when this day-player cop comes in and asks, ‘Paul, what happened?’ But Paul can’t talk, he’s unable to deal with what he did. It was so well-written. Even though Paul was in the right, the whole guilt of it made him feel that he should be punished for it anyway. So then there wasn’t a really strong defense from Paul because he feels guilty.” When the story was suddenly wrapped up, how did you feel about that? “There was a change in head writers so I understood. But there was the discovery of a video of Ricky killing a girl, so that was interesting.” Then, lo and behold, Ricky’s knife was found in the sewer. “And there you go. The end!”