When your fictional father is one of the most heinous serial killers in the history of soap operas, the word "creepy" is an understatement. So, when General Hospital actress Avery Pohl (Esme Prince) recently chatted about what it's like for her to have Ryan Chamberlain as her on-screen dad, she used a more apt term for the material they share together: "make-your-skin-crawl scenes."
Speaking with Soap Opera Digest, the young actress shared some behind-the-scenes information about the episodes in which Esme met Ryan (Jon Lindstrom) in Spring Ridge.
"The biggest thing Jon and I wanted to do was make the audience second-guess everything -- and I think we're doing okay with that," she explains. "I did end up watching [the scenes], and I was like, 'Oh. Wow.' Jon was fantastic, and before [we shot them] we got some information on what our characters' history was because I felt it was beneficial for us to be on the same page."
She continues, "On set, it was very interesting to do. I heard the director go, 'Avery, can you, like, caress his hand a little more?' And I was like, 'Yeah, sure,' and at one point, Jon and I were like, 'Okay, everybody, we need to get it out of the way, so on 3, we're going to say, "1, 2, 3. Ewwww."' I was literally sweating while I was filming them!"
Pohl summed up the scenes the same way many viewers would. "They are naturally make-your-skin-crawl scenes," she says, adding, "We switched some things around so that you got the reveal that he could walk at the end of the scene, which I think really added to the moment of him saying, 'My beautiful, gifted daughter.' And Jon is just hysterical, so every scene with him, I kind of have to try not to laugh. He's a super-nice dude, and I think we made those scenes as comfortable as we could, but they were very interesting things to have to film, and a very questionable relationship to portray -- to say the least!"
If you're interested in hearing more about how actors feel when they're tasked with sharing scenes with co-stars whose alter egos are chilling individuals, click here to find out what Kelsey Wang, who played Dawn of Day cult member Daisy Kwan, told Soap Central about working with Coby Ryan McLaughlin when he was playing "creepy, slimy" cult leader Shiloh.
How do you feel about the work that Avery Pohl and Jon Lindstrom have done as GH father/daughter pair Esme and Ryan? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.
