While General Hospital fans were disappointed that Jack Wagner didn’t return as super spy Frisco Jones, The Bold and the Beautiful viewers know that GH’s loss is their gain. Already, Wagner has brought his B&B character Nick back to Los Angeles to woo Brooke since he found out Ridge dumped her for Taylor. Nick and Brooke have some major chemistry and it doesn’t seem to have gone away. Wagner got his start in soaps, but had some sobering thoughts about the genre’s acting process.
It Can Create Bad Habits
Most soap opera fans are aware that actors shoot upwards of 80 to 150 pages of dialogue a day in the fast-paced environment, with very little time for more than one take. Wagner opened up to People about the pace of soaps, remarking that it’s helpful for memorizing dialogue. He also stated the positive points with, “I think it’s also great if you’re trained enough to understand what it takes to have a believable performance in a very short time.”
Wagner noted that actors often get changes to the script up to just before they’re about to record. However, he explained that while many state soaps are a great training ground, he didn’t quite agree with that because, “You can develop bad habits that you lean on as an actor.”
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He Shed His Bad Habits
Wagner further explained that, “You want to create moments,” but those are difficult if an actor is too focused on their dialogue. This is especially true if they’re trying to recall improvised words that arent’ in the scripts. He cited the short amount of time they get in front of the camera as the reason actors could be bumped out of the moment.
He stated that he worked hard on shedding such bad habits. In the end though, he extolled the positive attributes of the soapy way of doing things. “It’s a great training ground in terms of preparation and [figuring out] ‘how do I give a performance that’s fantastic, the best it can be?'” he remarked.
