Hunter King certainly has drama down, having won two Daytime Emmy Awards for her work as The Young and the Restless' Summer Newman. But the actress is also proving to be a queen of comedy on her primetime series Life in Pieces -- which she says is mostly due to the training she's had in daytime.
"Soap work is so intense, it makes everything else seem a lot easier!" she tells Soap Central with a laugh. "You have to memorize a lot of lines, and you're working so much and so quickly that it just makes going and filming another show [so much easier]. You'll have five scenes in a day compared to 40 scenes in a day. It's so much easier and less stressful at other jobs, just knowing, 'Okay, I got this, it's not as many lines, I can take more time to prepare.' Whereas at The Young and the Restless, you are going, going, going, going. And we don't get hiatuses like Life in Pieces gets hiatuses. It's just all year long, basically, going all the time."
That's not to say that filming comedy work is easy, however. In fact, there's a lot of pressure that comes along with the job of making people laugh.
"It's not like at Y&R, where you don't know if you'll get the reaction that you want out of people; when you're working on a comedy, if people don't laugh at your joke, you know that you suck! You know instantly if people don't like what you did," she explains. "So, I think it's almost harder to make people laugh, because you know right away if your joke didn't land."
She continues: "The best is when you can make your castmates laugh. At Y&R, we get only a few takes, sometimes just one or two takes for each scene. Whereas on Life in Pieces, we get so, so many takes. So, the first few takes, we do it as written, and then they tell us after they get those chunks of scenes, they say, 'Now just ad-lib and do whatever.' So, everyone tries to make each other laugh in the scenes. So, if you can make your costars laugh, and you can make the crew laugh and your director laugh, if you can hear them over in video village laughing, then you know if landed well. But if no one laughs or cracks a smile, you're like, 'Yeeaaahhhh, I'm not gonna do that one again!"
That intensity makes King very, very hesitant to try comedy in front of a live audience. In fact, when Soap Central asks her if she ever has to film Life in Pieces in front of an audience, her response is so loud, it's a wonder it doesn't crack her phone screen.
"NOOOOOO! Oh, thank God! Thank God!" she exclaims. "I don't do well in front of people. Oh, my gosh, no way. I think I would pee my pants every day!"
For more from King on her career, family, and work as Y&R's Summer, check out Soap Central's interview with the actress earlier this year.
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