Colin Egglesfield Speaks on Breaking into All My Children

Our friends over at BuddyTV recently caught up with Colin Egglesfield from All My Children. Here are excerpts from the interview...

When you first got All My Children, were you familiar with the show or the characters, and all the back story?
Yeah, what was funny, it's ironic, when I was growing up my mom used to watch All My Children every day. You know, my sister and her used to have it on, and so you know, as a kid, you know, playing around in the living room, it was always on. So I always kind of heard the names Erica Kane and Ted Martin and Adam Chandler. So I kind of knew a little bit about the soap.

But you know, I never watched soaps growing up, and the only other soap that I even sort of watched was As the World Turns, because my college roommate used to watch it every day. And so I would come back from class and he would have it on, and I would just kind of sit there, you know, eating my lunch and watch it with him. So I kind of watched that a little bit, but no, I hadn't really watched it before getting on the show.

Then how do you prepare for something like that? Do you do a lot of research? Do you just hear stories about all the back story? Because there's a lot of plot going on in the back story of all these characters. And do you get caught up in that?
Yeah, what do I do, I pray a lot. It's… what do I do, it is a lot, you know. I felt, I definitely felt overwhelmed when I first got there, because it was just, the mountain of material we do everyday is just immense compared to any other form of, you know, acting that's out there.

We just we go through like 80 on average, about 80 pages a day, so you've very little time to rehearse. Very little time to, you know, just kind of investigate and find out what is going on in the scene. So you're, you know, forced to improvise and just come up with stuff very quickly. And it's usually through rehearsal where you find that certain things make the scene go better, or find out certain things about your character.

And because you cannot afford that luxury, you just kind of have to, you know, wing it at certain times. And then of course, coming out in the show with really not knowing your character is, it's just, it took a while for me to kind of figure who Josh Madden is and why he does the things that he does.

And before you know it, you know, along the past two years they would kind of, you know, make up stories as it goes along to make it fit into the storyline. They wanted me to kidnap this girl I was in love with, and you know, fly this airplane and crash on this deserted island. So they just made up that when I was nine years old, my father made me take pilot's lessons, so I had my pilot's license.

You know, so, little things like that where you just kind of, you would never have known about when you first started, you just find out as the character and the story progresses. So yeah, sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's pretty funny, but the great thing about it is it's always something different, it always keeps you on your toes

You mentioned earlier about your mother and sister watching, and hearing the name Erica Kane. And now she's your mother, and how is it playing the character who's the son of such an iconic figure in the world of soaps?
You know it's tough, because she's so iconic and she's just, she's just someone who is revered. And just to me, you know, Erica Kane. Whenever you think of soaps, I always thought of Erica Kane, and to me she's like daytime royalty. So when I first got on the show I was definitely nervous to work with her, and you just want to make sure that you're prepared.

And that you, that you are able to bring whatever you need to in order for them to, you know, the other actors and especially Susan Lucci to respect you and want to work with you. And so in the beginning was definitely a little challenging because I didn't know what I was definitely doing, because it just takes a while to get comfortable with the way they shoot, with the four camera setup and the technical movements and that sort of thing.

But the great thing with working with Susan was that she was so welcoming and so friendly, and kind of just took me under her wing and just showed me certain things. And if she could tell I wasn't really comfortable or sure about a certain thing she would, she would show me or tell me or, you know, just kind of guide me in the right direction. Because working so quickly, the directors only had so much time to kind of tell you what to do or what you need around the scene that needs to be played.

And so she was, yeah, she was great. She still is great with regards to, with all that stuff. And now that we've worked together for a while, I feel like it's fun, because the way they've written our characters is such that it's very similar to a real mother-son relationship. In the sense that that she definitely cares about me and loves me, but at the same time is protective and wants to help me, so at times I feel like she's overstepping her bounds.

And I want to, you know, push back, so we kind of have this push-pull love-hate relationship at times, which is fun to play, so.

To read the full interview, click here.

Matt Richenthal is the Editor in Chief of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter and on Google+.