Interview Outtakes, Part 5

Charles Shaughnessy (ex-Shane, Days of Our Lives): The streets of Hollywood are littered with people shattered by broken dreams. If you hadn’t been so set on some point in the future and had just been there in the present and seen what opportunities are in front of you — if you could see what was there right then and there, I think you’d have a lot less disappointment and frustration.

Peter Bergman (Jack, The Young and the Restless): For the first time, Jack is realizing that he is now head of the family. It’s going to be the longer story-line arc over the next couple of years — Jack taking his seat as head of the family.

Rena Sofer (ex-Lois, General Hospital): I intend to understand that you really can’t change your children’s mind on who they are going to choose (as a love interest). If you try to get involved in those choices, you might get kicked out of their life. Unless that choice is truly a dangerous choice, even then, you want to be there in case your child falls down. You don’t want to be so disconnected that he or she can’t come to you because there is too much water under the bridge. As a parent, it’s my job to guide and not my job to control. But it’s hard because I like to be in control.”

Robert Newman (ex-Josh, Guiding Light): Ellen Wheeler really understood this need for me to go away and do theater. It’s very easy to write a character out for a month: Josh went away on a business trip. And then you come back very refreshed having been challenged in a different way. It would give me more energy to move forward with Joshua. Other producers didn’t like the idea of me going away, but Ellen was very good with that, I think because she had been an actress for so long.

I rehearsed Sessions almost exclusively on my own, because the cast wasn’t really available, and the times they were available, I was doing Guiding Light. Once the show opened, I had this commute from hell. I live about 50 miles north of Manhattan; Peapack, New Jersey, where we shot all the location stuff for GL, is about 100 miles west of where I live. So I would do that drive at 5 a.m., shoot GL all day, and then drive another 45 miles or so into the city from there, and either shoot more stuff in the studio for GL or do Sessions, and then come back home around midnight, and then repeat the next day and the next day.

Sherri Shepherd (The View): My cast (of Sherri) is a dream come true. They cast Malcolm Jamal Warner as my husband, and he’s gorgeous. Initially, when they first said Malcolm Jamal Warner, all I could think was, this is Theo from The Cosby Show. Then he walked in the room and his voice is deep and he’s been lifting weights, and I realized, this isn’t Theo from The Cosby Show anymore. He is absolutely gorgeous. Michael Boatman from Spin City plays my son’s pediatrician, and we kind of have been dating a little bit. They keep bringing me these gorgeous guys on the set, and they have my character playing the field.

Interview: Life After the Light for Robert Newman

When “Guiding Light” ended its historic 72-year run this past fall, fans were devastated. Robert Newman, who played Joshua Lewis for almost 25 years, is still in New York and is currently starring in the musical “Sessions,” which he began performing in prior to “GL’s” demise. I had the chance to chat with Robert to discuss the end of the “GL” era.

Daytime Dial: What were those last few weeks of filming like on the “GL” set? It must have been a pretty bittersweet time.
Robert Newman: Part of my doing “Sessions” was to give me a distraction from the fact that “Guiding Light” was ending, and it really worked well. My experience of those last few weeks might be different from some of the others, because I was already on this other journey. I almost didn’t have time to digest how heavy this thing was: the ending of a 72-year, 15,672-episode show, of which I spent many years of my life. I did around 3,500-4,000 episodes. The last couple of days, it started to become a bigger thing for me to realize and understand that this really was going to end.


We shot the last scene a few days earlier than the last day of shooting, with Josh and Reva meeting at the lighthouse and riding off in the truck together. That had its own feel to it, because we knew it was going to be the final scene of the show, with “always” being the last word spoken on the show. So that was an emotional day.


The last day we actually shot, a lot of the people who worked on the show came out (on location) to Peapack, N.J., that day. We also had about 200 fans who watched us filming, following us from location to location. As each scene ended, there would be an announcement made that this actor had shot his last scene, and he had been on the show for five years, or 12 years, or 13 years, or whatever it was, and there was a toast and applause, and then we’d shoot the next scene. And, of course, there was a big bash that night.

DD: How has it been since the show ended? What do you miss about it?
RN: Since then, it’s been a bit of an emotional roller coaster, something I didn’t expect or anticipate. I miss the people, I really do. I wasn’t particularly the most social guy on the show, but when you work that intimately and that closely with people, you kind of take it for granted. I will say that I don’t really miss the show — I’m not sure what that’s about, but I don’t. I’ve moved on. It was time to say goodbye to Josh, and I’m OK with that. It was about the people — it was about working with Kim Zimmer, it was about Josh and Reva, it was about being with people on both sides of the camera who are just a hoot to work with.

DD: Are you happy with the ending?
RN: The writers had a wicked task ahead of them. I mean, how do you wrap up 72 years of storytelling? Their sort of bailout of going to a one-year-later scenario worked fine. I think if they had tried to wrap everything up into tidy little packages on the couple of months that we had, I think it would have been sloppy. It was appropriate that the last scenes are with Josh and Reva, and driving off in the truck at the lighthouse. I joked that the truck should all of a sudden explode and then go to a black screen, sort of a “Sopranos”-like ending, but they didn’t go for that. They wanted the happy ending.

DD: What are your plans for the future?
RN: I will probably stay on stage for a while. It feels good to me, and it’s where I want to be. That might mean doing some traveling (to various region theaters), but I’ll probably stay on stage for a bit. That’s my way of taking a break — it gives me a break from the hectic television shooting schedule. Then I’ll figure out some things after that.

Interview: Catching Up With Robert Newman

Since the demise of “Guiding Light” this past fall, Robert Newman, who played Joshua Lewis for almost 25 years, has hardly been resting on his laurels. He’s been playing to packed houses in the musical “Sessions” at the Algonquin Theater in New York City. As the show nears its end in January, Robert took time to reflect on the play, as well as his time spent on “GL.”

Robert is no stranger to theater, and musicals specifically. He explains: “For the past five or six years, I had been taking a month or two off from ‘Guiding Light’ to do theater somewhere, and it’s almost exclusively been musicals. It’s something I kept quiet for the soap. They asked me to sing a few times, but I said no. Plus, I just couldn’t envision a situation where Josh would suddenly break out into song.”

In “Sessions,” Robert leads a talented cast of singers and dancers as Dr. Peterson. Robert says: “The show is about a therapist and his patients. There are eight patients, all representing different walks of life and different problems in life. For example, there’s an older married couple who hate each other; there’s a man who’s very reclusive; there’s a woman who’s beaten by her husband, etc. All of them represent different struggles in life.

“The therapist himself is going through a midlife crisis where he is on the brink of having an affair with one of his younger patients, which would not only destroy his marriage, but his career as well. He is also beginning to question the value of what he does. He’s very skilled at his job, but he doesn’t think so.”

“Sessions” will ring true for many people who come to see it. Robert says: “There’s a lot of comedy in the show, and quite a bit of tragedy as well — kind of how life is. The audiences really like the show. Everybody in the audience can relate to some character in the show. We have people in the audience who are very weepy by the time we get to certain sections in the second act. For some of the soap fans, it’s interesting for them to see me as someone other than Joshua.”

So, what was it like for Robert to work with a cast other than his family at “GL”? “Everyone has been great. They welcomed me in. A lot of them have been on board with the show since the beginning. I brought a very different take to Dr. Peterson than my predecessors had, and they all climbed aboard and took the ride with me. They’ve been very loving and supportive, and we’ve become very close in the five months I’ve been working on it. The theater has become my second family now.”

Fans can expect to see much more of Mr. Newman’s board-treading. He reveals:
“There’s nothing like being on stage. I feel very much at home. I love having a live audience, and I love the give-and-take that happens between the audience and cast.”

If you are going to be in the New York area, check out Robert’s turn as a song-and-dance man. “Sessions” runs until the beginning of January; you can get more details at sessionsthemusical.com. And don’t miss next week’s column, where Robert discusses those final days on “Guiding Light.”

The Nonprofit Shopping Mall

Along with the stars of Guiding Light, you can benefit your favorite nonprofit organization by doing your holiday shopping through the Nonprofit Shopping Mall. Go here: http://www.nonprofitshoppingmall.com/ for all the details. Join Robert Newman (Josh) and Nicole Forester (Cassie) and help out your favorite cause.