You know the old adage — the more things change, yada, yada, yada. The last time that Arianne Zucker was dubbed Soap Hub’s Performer of the Week, her Nicole Walker had the married name Brady, and she was giving hubby Eric the kiss off, and now she’s earning the honor for locking lips with Eric and deciding to extricate herself from life as Mrs. Rafe Hernandez.
Arianne Zucker — Performer of the Week
When Eric (Greg Vaughan) pulled away from his and Nicole’s passionate but illicit clinch and wondered aloud, “What are we doing,” Zucker looked momentarily stunned, then stung, then eked out, “What we’ve been wanting to do for months.”
No, no, that’s not what happened, declared Eric. They just lost their heads for a moment. Nothing more, nothing less. No harm, no foul. “I kissed you just now because I wanted to,” explained Nicole — Zucker now clear-voiced and speaking matter-of-factly. “It’s something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while now. I mean, every time I’ve seen you, actually. And every time I fight it, it just gets stronger. Eric, I want you…and from the way you kissed me just now, I think you want me to.”
Eric pushed back — “Nicole, we were once married, we’re always going to be attracted to one another.” — which only spurred Nicole on further. “No, this is more than just an attraction. The way I feel about you now is the same way I felt when we got married, and years before that. Can you honestly say that we just lost our heads and there’s not a hell of a lot more to it?
No, no he couldn’t. In fact, the day that she wed Rafe (Galen Gering) he had come to her door to tell her that he’d never stopped loving her. But what can they do about that now? She’s attached, he’s attached — should they just blow it all to hell and let the chips fall where they may?
Yes, yes they should, decrees Nicole. The last thing that she wants to do is hurt Rafe, but she’s not in love with him. That truth Arianne Zucker delivered not with tears and theatrics but measured restraint — but when Nicole coped to still loving Eric despite, “really screwing things up,” and, “the pain,” that they’d endured she put just the right amount of catch in her voice. Some divas could learn a thing or two from this performance.
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