RICK HEARST EVENT IN NYC I swear I am not becoming a Rick Hearst groupie, but I jumped at the opportunity to combine his event with a nice weekend visit with some dear friends in my hometown. I was not disappointed. The event was held at the Marriott East Side in Manhattan and there was a rather small turnout undoubtedly due to the GH Fan Club Weekend a few weeks ago. But, as usual, Rick has a regular group of adoring fans, and I saw Lynn there, the lady who did the set tour with me in February. Rick appeared with a newly grown “vacation” beard, since he was actually on a two week vacation. NYC is his hometown too, so he and wife Donna and sons Nicholas and Cameron spent a week there going to Broadway shows, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, visiting old neighbors, etc. Ric has a close friend who works with the Jersey Boys show on Broadway, and he would love to do a show one day. His character Ric is also to be on vacation with Molly in NYC. He talked about the GH Weekend and how Stephen Macht (daddy Trevor) joined him at his event. As I witnessed previously too, these two have a wonderful relationship. Stephen calls him “Richie” all the time, along with other endearing Yiddish names. Rick did a great impersonation of Stephen, as well as one of Bradford Anderson’s Spinelli. After his vacation in NYC he and the family were leaving for a week in the Bahamas. After chatting for a little while, we had a chance to ask questions. Of course the burning question, precipitated by the cover of SOD with Rick’s photo and big “OUT”, was whether he would be leaving GH. He said that the cover was wrong – he has three months to go on his contract and has not been contacted one way or another yet. He loves working at GH, loves his cast mates and would love to continue. He is concerned about his lack of airtime. A very humorous moment occurred when he mentioned that one of his sons had turned on GH in the hotel room, and to his surprise he saw Carly asking Spinelli to frame Ric for Logan’s murder (Spinelli declined). He then asked if Carly forgot THIS, and pantomimed his pulling Carly out of the water under the docks, giving her mouth to mouth and thereby saving her life. Very funny! After Rick made the rounds of all the tables, and this man is very generous with his time and attention, I had the splendid opportunity (don’t ask how much it cost) to sit down with him one on one (I almost wrote “sit down on him”). What was supposed to be 20 minutes actually turned into 30, and was well worth it. I did it as an attempt to interview him, but we talked about other things too, like our cars, our love for NY, NY food, etc. He is very dedicated to his favorite charity, H. A. R. K., and as opposed to show folk who just make appearances at hospitals and nothing more, he puts his money where his mouth is. I asked him how cast members felt when someone was killed off (i.e. Logan, Michael) and he said that was an indication that the ax could fall on anyone at any time. In answer to the question of whether or not everyone was surprised by the best daytime show Emmy (we were!) he felt that the Metro Court hostage storyline was very strong, as were most of the sweeps storylines. I told him that it seemed some characters were brilliantly written, like Diane and Spinelli, others were not, and that the storylines were so uneven and he agreed. I said that his character Ric, due to lack of screen time, seemed rather undefined now – sort of between good and evil sometimes, and he said this would be a perfect opportunity to bring him back big time in a different direction. He said Maurice always says he wished they had more scenes together. He was disappointed that his storyline with love interest Marianna fizzled, but it was written during the strike and dropped afterwards. We were laughing about the Emmy statuette appearing in several different scenes and this was Jill’s doing. He asked her why his Emmy was never on display, too, LOL. Well, as all good things must come to an end, so did my chat with Rick. As always he is genuine, friendly and extremely personable. I hope TPTB at GH continue to appreciate his talent and loyalty by offering him a new contract and giving him something meaty to sink his teeth into, because he is so capable. You can write
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