Soap Opera Digest: Is it hard being part of a supercouple, knowing that the fans really only want you two to be together? Does it prevent you from having other storylines?
Drake Hogestyn: I think it's possible to be part of a supercouple and keep them alive and interesting and stimulating. It most definitely is. It takes work on our part sometimes. You need airtime, good story... it all starts with good story.
Deidre Hall: I think the good part about it is we know we get to be a supercouple. There is a comfort and a confidence in that... "Okay, you want to try me over here for a while? Alrighty, fine. Wanna try me with Roman for a while? Alrighty, go ahead." You just know that this show does supercouple like nobody ever has and nobody ever will and there's a chemistry.
Drake Hogestyn: When she's there and vice versa, everything slows down and it's very comfortable. John can yell at Marlena, Marlena can yell at John, they can fight, they can have the issues and get it out, but even in the disagreements, the anger, there's still that love connection that keeps them together. That's a very volatile part of their relationship, too. They're both very stubborn people, opinionated and head-strong. There's an attractiveness in that.

Soap Opera Digest:What was your toughest scene?
Drake Hogestyn: Personally, it was just recreating the past with one of the writers. It was the dungeon stuff. It was finding Johnny Black, 1985. When I took that name off the Vietnam War Memorial and I stumbled into the soup kitchen, that was all I knew about this character. I walked in, dusted the name off, John Black, there it is. January 10, 1986, airdate January 23. Now in Maison Blanche, I'm seeing Johnny Black, 1985 and they just explain it away. I see Father Francis and he says "John Black," when he sees me. I went upstairs [to the production office] and I'm like, "How does he know me?" They said, "He taught you in the seminary." I'm like, "I understand that, but didn't we have this whole thing with reconstructive surgery, the whole bit I don't look the same..." Everything that I'd based the character on was explained away with a rewrite, "Well, maybe it was all a lie," they said. Okay. That was hard. It still is. That was huge. That was only two beats, but the rest of it has all been good. Even the times when you're called to load the bases for someone else to hit the home run.
Deidre Hall: A baseball analogy. How surprising. My hardest scene was the airplane scene.
Drake Hogestyn: You were fabulous in that.
Deidre Hall: We'd been working and working and right before our scene, Elaine Bromka [ex-Stella] had a scene and [a producer] came out and was giving her a very bad time. Something about the height. She was terrified of the height, it was over an open pit. He had sort of unloaded on her a bit. Then we did the airplane scene, which was a love, sex, rape, love scene.
Drake Hogestyn: Was it all in the same time? John was leaving Salem. I remember he was like, "It's not gonna work, I just can't be in town with you anymore. Something really bad's gonna happen here."
Deidre Hall: We did the scene a number of times and we did it perfectly -- push, slap, shove, cry, scream, coat, rape, kiss... it was all there. The producer came out on stage and said, "Quit phoning it in. Now go do it for real." What was he thinking? I finished the scene and then couldn't stop crying, and then went right into the next scene. Couldn't even clean up, just went right into the next scene. Roll tape again. I don't remember much about it, except it was uncomfortable.
Drake Hogestyn: Why would you say that? Because you broke through a different wall?
Deidre Hall: There's a place where I think of as an acting indulgence that you want to say, "Buck up here, it is a performance."

Soap Opera Digest: Do you adlib or change things?
Drake Hogestyn: Maybe a few ifs, ands and buts.
Deidre Hall: Not much.
Drake Hogestyn: They'll step on you. They'll say, "We definitely need this said. We need this line just the way it's written. We need it like that because we're gonna build on something." We're okay with that.
Deidre Hall: I paraphrase a lot more than you do.
Drake Hogestyn: But we listen to each other so it doesn't matter. They've worked with us so long in the booth that they know we listen and we respond well off of inflections and how we relate to each other. We're also good in laying it out there in the reaction shot. We know the scene's taken on a different flavor and we'll take the beat and see the cameras go left and right and go back again and pick right up on it and move into a different direction. It's all listening and relating and acting off each other, which is very comfortable.
Deidre Hall: I think that when the director gets what's happening, they'll adlib shots, like, "Okay, they're going off in a different direction, let's all go along for the ride."
Drake Hogestyn: We feel it too. It's all the synergy between us and the booth and it all works really well. It runs smooth. That's a given. They don't feel it until we feel it. That's when the scenes come alive. You can rehearse them all you want here, in the dressing room, on the floor, when the red light starts playing, different things start happening, energy starts taking off.