As for Edmund's own life, Macdonald has zeroed in on a storyline
opportunity for him to turn down a darker path. "It would be the perfect
thing if he's still crazy about Lorelei/Beth," suggests Macdonald. "He does
everything in his power to wheel and deal and impress her to try to get her
back. I don't mind him being in love, I just would like him to be nasty."
But not irredeemable. "You have to draw the line somewhere," Macdonald admits.
"I mean, rape and child murder are a little irredeemable, but there have
been some very successful villains. GL's Roger Thorpe (played by the late
Michael Zaslow) is one, and (General Hospital's) Luke, didn't he rape Laura?
And Jake McKinnon, he raped someone ages ago on Another World -- they're
longstanding characters." Macdonald envisions Edmund starting a corporation
and manipulating stocks so the Spauldings are ruined and have to build back
their fortune. Or, perhaps, "seducing men's wives in order to destroy their
marriages so you can make them weak and get hold of their stock: sinister,
nasty stuff."
Macdonald explains that his character's flaws stem from battling his personal
demons. "His father hated him; there's no reason that he shouldn't have the
same opinion of himself," he relates. "He goes to great lengths to prove
to himself that he's better than (half brother) Richard and worthy of his
father's love. I think that the coldness and cruelty of his father, the death
of his mother at a young age and all the attention going to Richard are the
largest motivation for him to fill that void. As the writers unfold the character
we see he's looking for love to fill up that emptiness."
There was no such void in Macdonald's own youth. Born in Washington, D.C.,
(yes, the accent is fake), Macdonald knew in high school that he wanted to
perform, but in a slightly different venue: opera. However, "I knew I didn't
have the discipline it would take to pursue that kind of career," he admits,
so he turned to acting in college and eventually attended Julliard. He married
poet Nicolette Nicola in 1994, and they welcomes a son, Ian, in 2001.
Macdonald's soap career took off when he landed a role on AW as Jordan Stark
in 1998. "He was a gothic villain, a 221-year-old facially deformed,
time-traveling scientific genius," Macdonald remembers. "Jordan Stark made
Bill Gates' money look like pocket change."
That role ended when AW was canceled in 1999. Later that year he moved to
GL. "They were looking for someone who could do a British accent. I told
them that I could do British accents. Eventually they gave me an audition.
"When Edmund first came on, my feeling was he was a 3.5 month character who
was going to be killed off when he went over the cliff in Puerto Rico back
in 1999, but the show saw the character as becoming something more versatile,"
he explains.
Macdonald has enjoyed adding to that versatility -- particularly Edmund's
sense of humor. "I was asked not to do so much, and I did cut back. But I
tried to keep it there, and I think now they write it. It's fun to do a villain
that has some humor."
Among Edmund's funniest bits was his stint as piano man "Eddie Ivories."
But that wasn't Macdonald tickling the keys. "I wish I could play the piano,"
he says. "The first ghost player was Jeff Alfierro. For the Christmas episode,
Brian Siewert, the show's composer, played."
During his awkward school years, Macdonald compose the devilish sense of
humor that serves Edmund well as a defense mechanism. "I was far bigger than
anyone else and I felt very gawky. I was also dyslexic and not a successful
as other students, so I compensated by being funny. I think Edmund has
compensated with his arrogance.
"Wittiness, in his opinion, is the only thing that keeps his head above water,"
Macdonald concludes. "Sometimes, when you're not feeling very good about
yourself, the one thing you can hang your hat on is, 'OK, at least I'm clever.'
It's a pretty pathetic peg to hang an entire lifejacket on, but sometimes
it's the only thing that people like Edmund have."
--Joe Diliberto |
