Soap Opera Digest Online, 2000
GL's Royal Renegade
by Jason Bonderhoff
(excerpt)

Edmund The Lyin'-Hearted

Last year on Another World, David Andrew Macdonald played Jordan Stark, a 221-year old time traveling whiz kid. Now he's Guiding Light's Edmund Winslow, a bad-asp prince from a small island nation off the Florida coast. "I'm not exactly the doctor next door with a heart of gold," confides Macdonald. "I never play the more pedestrian characters. Somehow I always play the outlandish ones, which are a lot of fun. When a script comes up and somebody goes, 'That plot twist is ridiculous! You can't justify this! It makes no sense,' there's always a glint in my eye that says, I don't know, it's worth a try...'"

Digest Online: Prince Edmund seems very different than the character you played on Another World. Actually, didn't you play three separate characters on AW?

Macdonald: Yes, I was Jordan Stark and then two incarnations of David Halliday. The fake one and then the real one. It was rather greedy of them not to give me a full character. But this role, Prince Edmund, is something that is probably a little more up my alley. I only say that because so many of the characters I've played in the theater have been of British extraction.

Digest Online: I know you've done a lot of Shakespeare...

Macdonald: Also Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward, that kind of stuff. Plus I did a national tour of "The Inspector Calls", another British play.

Digest Online: San Cristobel seems like a fictionalized Bermuda, more English than Caribbean. So I guess having an English sensibility as an actor helps.

Macdonald: It's funny, though. Here you have these two Winslow boys, Prince Richard and Prince Edmund, living as small-time monarchs on this tiny, probably former English outpost, and the roles are being played by Bradley Cole and myself, who in reality are a couple of Irish Catholic boys.

Digest Online: You and Bradley really could be brothers.

Macdonald: People have pointed out that we look alike, which is so funny. I don't know if it's part luck or what, but he and I have gotten along quite famously. We both have pretty strong theater backgrounds, so we have a lot of stuff to talk about and sort of the same interests.

Digest Online: I was just wondering. Did you test only for Edmund, or did they have you audition for both parts, to see which brother you were best suited to play?

Macdonald: Bradley tells the story that he was originally auditioning for Prince Edmund, and I guess when they saw him the producers said, "No, he's Prince Richard!" At one point, I was auditioning for Prince Richard, and I kind of got the same reaction from them: "Nope, didn't work. Sorry."