Faking anguish and grief during Eric’s intense bedside vigil for a sick Stephanie wasn’t too much of a dramatic stretch for actor John McCook.
The star is happy to admit his love and respect for co-star Susan Flannery made the soon-to-be-screened emotionally charged scenes easy to muster.
Quietly, sensitively, the actor depicted Eric’s torment and helplessness at seeing Stephanie comatose after her stroke.
Viewers cannot help but be moved when Eric confesses to Stephanie: “I always thought I’d be here, and you’d be the one holding vigil.”
Sitting at her bedside, hoping she can somehow hear him, Eric fights to keep himself in check and not give in to fear and negative thoughts. He gains the inner strength to gently admit to Stephanie how he’d recently been reminded of how important she is to him and their family.
He acknowledges all she has done as a wife, mother and partner in the family business. “I haven’t told you how I appreciate that, but I do,” he says.
Holding her hand, caressing it lovingly, he wonders aloud: “Do you know how much you mean to me?” Then he pleads:” You come back to me. Give me another chance. Give us another chance.”
“Actors sometimes use substitutions – you think about an illness or the loss of someone in your own family and you play that,” McCook explains about how actors normally approach such emotional scenes.
“But in these scenes with Susan, it never occurred to me to do a substitution because I’ve been with Susan for so long. We have been friends and co-workers for 13 years now.
“So it’s a lot easier to do those kinds of scenes than people think, to take somebody that you love, that you work with so much and to put them into whatever the character’s situation is and to play the scenes. It was a very easy thing for me to look at Susan and to see her so vulnerable in that hospital bed,” he admits. “It was very easy for me to get in touch with those emotional feelings.”
McCook and Flannery have been working on B&B since day one. In many ways their relationship mirrors the strong ‘marriage’ they have on it. “We are like people that have been married for a long time in many respects,” he adds. “We know each other really well. We can do shorthand to one another – not just about work but other things too – by stealing looks at each other or sometimes simply by raising an eyebrow.
“We know what we’re saying and what we mean to each other. No words are necessary. Just as now words were necessary when Eric came into the hospital room and saw Stephanie lying there unconscious. No explanations were needed for the audience, or for Eric. They were in the same boat.”
McCook concludes: “Susan and I, we’re very dependent on each other to accomplish our work every day.
“So the idea of Stephanie almost dying, and the very idea of wanting to hold her and to let her know how much he loves her was easier to do than you would think. It made for very meaningful scenes.”
Soap World (Australia), April 2000, Issue # 26