Articles and Interviews: 2007

Carolyn's Corner (Soap Opera Weekly 3/6/07)

Carolyn: Jessica and Nash get trapped in a fire this week and finally admit they love each other.
Forbes: She says she loooves me. And then the building catches fire so we decide to have sex.

Carolyn: And then Antonio busts you out?
Forbes: Yes. He saves Jessica first and then picks me up off the ground, at which point a large metallic object falls on us. He lifts it off of me.

Carolyn: Are Antonio and Nash okay?
Forbes: Antonio turns up at the hospital with third-degree burns and pieces of his fingers falling off. The makeup was pretty good. But I suspect when they take the bandages off, he will still have all 10 fingers.

Carolyn: Why do you say that?
Forbes: If John can be burned to death so that his own mother can't recognize him and then come back with a full head of hair and nothing but a Phantom of the Opera mask, I suspect that Antonio will not be missing a finger.

Carolyn: Do Nash and Jessica feel guilty that Antonio got hurt rescuing them while they were fooling around?
Forbes: Yes. Nash feels bad because Antonio's being so kind to him. Which honestly, I've had a hard time playing. If I were Nash, I would be resentful of the good thigns that Antonio is doing for me. If a guy got my finacee, adopted my child, bought my vineyard, and then gave me a job tending bar, each one of those things would further my resentment. But I played it that I do actually begin to feel guilty. I mean, he did just burn off his fingertips and pull a stake out of his chest to save my life. Ironically, it's Clint who flips the switch and gets Nash back on his feet. Back to old, resentful, up-to-no-good Nash.

Carolyn: I like the scenes between Nash and Clint.
Forbes: I freaking love them. Jerry verDorn should have more scenes with more characters like that. He's like the voice of the audience. Antonio and Nash have all these defensive layers of lies and deceit and ulterior motives. When you talk to Clint, he's like a therapist or an uncle. He can ask the questions that nobody else can ask. And you can answer him in a way that you never would answer anybody, including yourself. Almost every major turn in Nash's attitude toward anybody -- be it Viki, Jessica, Tess or Antonio -- has been guided by Clint's questions, which made Nash confront his own feelings.

Carolyn: That's so interesting. Do we know anything about Nash's family?
Forbes: Nothing. There's been a lot of talk about whether Clint could be Nash's dad, but I love the fact that we have a father/son relationship without him being my father. We have been through similar circumstances. He's the voice of wisdom.

Carolyn: Is Nash just going to pine for Jessica forever?
Forbes: Well, we just taped some scenes where Nash finally grew some testicular fortitude. Unfortunately, so did the wall that I was supposed to punch at the end of the scene. Nash calls Jessica on everything. She pushes him and pushes him and finally he snaps and I'm supposed to put my fist through a wall. The wall was supposed to be drywall. The wall was plywood.

Carolyn: Oh, no!
Forbes: Fist meets plywood. Plywood won. The way it was written, I'm supposed to punctuate each word with a punch. So, I punched it the first time, and it just dented. I go into the speech and I kept punching it. Only at the very end did I realize that it was plywood.

Carolyn: Did you break your wrist?
Forbes: I damaged it. You'll see when the next scene starts, the close-up of my hand. There's real blood, so they didn't need to squirt my hand with [fake] blood.

Carolyn: So Antonio has makeup to look like burned flesh, but you have real blood. Who's the bigger man?
Forbes: Hey, that's up to the fans to decide!