After Years of Crossing Paths, ONE LIFE TO LIVE’s Hillary B. Smith and Jerry verDorn Are Happy To Be Exploring “Clora.”

Soap Opera Digest: When did you first meet?
Hillary B. Smith: In the ‘80’s. I was on AS THE WORLD TURNS [as Margo] and Jerry was on GUIDING LIGHT [as Ross]. How long were you on GUIDING LIGHT?
Jerry verDorn: Same time Bobby [Woods, Bo] started here, spring of 1979. I was a surgeon on RYAN’S HOPE for two weeks before I killed someone on the table, and someone killed me. I never did want to do a contract.
Smith (rolling her eyes): So confining – 29 years later!

Digest: What were your first impressions of each other?
verDorn: I thought she was tremendously smart. Plus, she had good legs.
Smith: And he had a cute tush! What? What’d I say? No, I’ve always loved his work on GUIDING LIGHT.

Digest: So what did you think when you heard he was joining OLTL?
Smith: I thought it was brilliant casting. I’d heard that he’d been put on recurring on GUIDING LIGHT and I couldn’t understand why in the world you would ever do that, and then I found out it was to our advantage! At the time he came on, Nora was in a coma. So I was like, “Oh, God, our ships passing in the night again.” That’s when I thought I was leaving. I just sort of gave him a big hug and said, “I’m sorry we’re not going to get to work together!” And then our paths didn’t cross for years.

Digest: After working with Erika Slezak (Viki) and Robin Strasser (Dorian), what did you think when you learned you were going to be paired with Hillary?
verDorn: What a trifecta! Three of my favorite ladies.
Smith: I will say that when they gave me [a story with] Jerry, Robin was not very pleased. She goes, “You’re so lucky to be working with Jerry!” We all fought over him. I won…for now.

Digest: What kind of fan response have you gotten about the Clint and Nora pairing?
verDorn: I have a small sampling because I don’t do the internet. If they take the time to write snail mail, it’s usually positive.
Smith: We’ve gotten candies with hears on them that say, “Clora forever.”
verDorn: And we got flowers. At least from the letters I’ve gotten, they like that [Clint and Nora] went to tell Bo. To go to him and say, “We’re dating,” shows consideration for family and it also, I think, legitimizes them being former brother- and sister-in-law.
Smith: The only sort of interesting negative mail I got was from a die-hard Bo and Nora fan. It said, “It’s gross that you’re dating his brother.” There’s a contingent out there that is really die-hard Bo and Nora and they’re gonna be the harder ones to win over for this pairing. Most people are just happy to see these characters happy.
verDorn: A lot of people like it, oddly enough, because it’s going so slowly.
Smith: It was romance.
verDorn: It’s sort of a step. They had to go through friendship and had bad things happening in each other’s lives, and they were living in the same mansion but not sleeping together.

Digest: Have Clint and Nora consummated their relationship yet?
Smith: No, they actually had a scene [written] where they work up in each other’s arms in the morning, and I said “How do you feel about that?” And both of us felt like, “It’s the middle of a strike, why are we losing that moment? Let’s save it.” And also, Nora’s not going to sleep with him in his mansion with her son [living there]! And she hasn’t had that conversation with Matthew, either.
verDorn: That’s a good scene coming up if you ever have it.
Smith: So we changed it to Nora coming in and waking him up. We both felt very strongly about it.

Digest: If there is a love scene, would you be up for it?
Smith: Well, yeah, it comes with the territory. Sure! I mean, I’m not gonna do the love scenes I used to do years ago because nobody wants to see that, which were Woodsies and bare backs. For a while there, it was like soft-core porn.

Digest: What are Woodsies?
Smith: Every time Bob Woods and I had a scene, they shot me naked from the back, so I was always in these tiny little bikini bottoms and they had to put these things on my breasts. They would get taped on and the first time I had to drop a robe in front of Woods, I wrote, “Hi, Woodsy” on them, so when I went out and dropped my robe and the camera was behind me and you saw my back, with his face – no reaction at all.
verDorn: That’s acting.
Smith: No reaction at all. And finally, when they said, “Cut!” I went “Woods? What the hell were you looking at?” And he goes, “They sky, the scenery, the robe, anything but that.” So then they just became “Woodsies.” I think they also got taped to his door at one point.
verDorn (laughing): Is nothing sacred? I guess not.
Smith: Not with me, you’ll learn that.

Digest: So, Hillary, is Jerry a good kisser?                                      
Smith: I don’t kiss and tell.
verDorn: I do [laughs]. She’s terrific. Especially when there’s an aroma of hay and straw.

Digest: Ah, the kiss that launched a thousand ships against Buchanan Enterprises, right?
Smith: I know. Hell hath no fury and whatnot. I had such a different vision of how that scene was going to play. I literally had us falling down in a big stack of hay and doing the scene, you know, swiggin’ on whatever his flask was, looking at the stars from a mound of hay. It got very awkward in there, but he handled it very well. He had to get down on his knee and move around. I was very impressed with the balance, the kissing and all that, and I thought, “My God, the man is a multitasker!”
verDorn (laughing): It was at the end of the day, so they were hell-bent to get out of there and the camera blocking is going a hundred miles an hour and it’s kind of up to us to, like, slow it down a little bit.
Smith: I always look at chemistry as sort of, you’re doing a high-wire act and you gotta have trust and respect that someone’s going to be there to catch you when you fly off the bar. It’s nice.
verDorn: And in this day of no rehearsals, it goes beyond nice. I like the fact that I have no fear of making a mistake or making a fool of myself because I trust the people I work with. An awful lot of instinct and trust has to factor into the equation.
Smith: A lot.
verDorn: We’ve both worked with people who are chemically engaged in some way – that’s not good – or somebody who doesn’t want to be there, so when you get to work someone like Hillary, you realize, “This doesn’t happen all the time.” The vets realize that more than the kids. Sometimes the younger people, if they’ve had success and then suddenly the show is not about them, they tend to say, “Well, when is the show going to get better again?” That’s really their time to impress the writers because supporting players are usually not written as complete as whoever the story is about.
Smith: It’s a matter of understanding this medium, and that it is or should be ensemble, and that everyone has a place, and everything should be cyclical as to who is front-burner, who’s back-burner. And that’s just the way it goes. I think it has to be that way in order to keep all the fans happy, to tell the story and fill the town out. It’s interesting. After everything I’ve been through personally on the show, [Nora’s] coma and the stroke, I feel like Jerry’s my cookie; he’s my treat.

Digest: So there is a reward for being on the back burner.
Smith: Well, I was in the freezer [laughs].
verDorn: She was back behind the stove.
Smith: I was close to being tossed out with freezer burn, I’d been in there so long! So he’s my reward.