While soap operas always bring heated love scenes and spicy secrets to the cities of Port Charles, Pine Valley, Genoa City, and many others, the daytime dramas also bring the heat and the secrets behind the scenes on the shows’ sets.
What is a six-liner? What soap had the first transgender character? And what does SORAS mean? From their start on the radio to intricate filming techniques to their Royal Family connections, soap sets have been full of lesser-known facts and secrets for decades.
Six-Liners
Have you ever watched your favorite soap and noticed a character appear that you’ve never seen before? A character who comes on for just a single episode and only has a few lines?
That character is known in the soap world as a “six liner” — an actor who comes on the show with up to only six lines — not enough to be considered a guest appearance but more than enough not to be considered an extra.
No Retakes
In typical film and TV shoots, an actor may shoot and scene twice, three times, or even a dozen times before getting it right. But in the world of soaps, due to their fast-paced schedules, actors are generally expected not to need retakes.
This process is made easier thanks to most soaps using multi-camera filming — unlike many other shows — and Days of Our Lives’ Chandler Massey and Freddie Smith were even known as the straight-tp-tape duo, never needing to rehearse their scenes before going straight to filming.
‘Bold And The Beautiful’s’ Groundbreaking Transgender Character
From Will Horton’s coming out on NBC’s Days of Our Lives to Bianca and Reese’s wedding on ABC’s All My Children, soap operas have tackled LGBTQ+ storylines since the early 2000s.
But in 2015, Bold and the Beautiful became the first show on daytime TV to have a transgender character. Maya Avant, played by Karla Mosley, came out as transgender in the beautifully-written storyline with the help of several transgender guest stars.
Radio Days
While soap operas air on daytime television now — and have since the ’50s — the dramas first found a home on the radio starting in 1937 with mere 15-minute-long episodes.
The first soap to air on the radio was Guiding Light, which spent 15 years on the radio before moving to television in 1952 and officially ending its run on CBS in 2009, becoming the longest-running American soap opera in history.
Filming Phone Calls
Unlike sitcoms, soap operas aren’t known for the split-screen shot of characters on a phone call. Instead, you’ll see the scenes hop back and forth from one character on the phone to the other, and there’s a fun way the soap films them.
Former Days of Our Lives star Freddie Smith revealed on his podcast that the way phone calls are filmed is by playing the audio of the character on the other end of the line while the actor being filmed recites their lines in response to the audio.
‘General Hospital’s’ Real Medical Supplies
While plenty of medical shows air on television and use a wide range of props, there’s something extra special about General Hospital’s decor.
That’s because GH has been known for getting to use real-life, retired medical supplies as props on the hospital set, specifically all those beeping monitors.
SORAS (Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome)
Have you ever watched a soap and a character was a child one episode and then became a teenager the next? It’s not your eyes playing tricks on you, it’s called Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome, and it’s been happening for decades.
SORAS was coined by Soap Opera Weekly editor-in-chief Mimi Torchin in the ’90s and is the act of rapidly aging child characters to better fit the current storylines.
COVID Protocols For Love Scenes
Once soaps got back to work after COVID-19 put them out of production for months in 2020, the shows responsible for love in the afternoon had a dilemma on their hands regarding those hot and heavy love scenes.
To keep the actors safe from catching COVID, their real-life partners would often be used as stand-ins for other actors while filming love scenes, tricking viewers into thinking it was the beloved fictional couples in the scenes.
Even if you’ve only ever watched one soap opera scene in your entire life, odds are you’ve witnessed a “tag.”
A tag is the end of a usually-dramatic scene, most likely leaving viewers with a cliffhanger when the camera cuts to a close-up of a character, who stares in silence until the next scene begins. While filming tags, the actors must remain acting until the director calls cut.
‘General Hospital’s’ Royal Family Connection
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While Bo and Hope got the fictional royal wedding on Days of Our Lives, it’s General Hospital that has always had connections to the real Royal Family.
Not only did the former Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle appear on GH as a six-liner nurse in 2006, but Laura Spencer’s portrayer Genie Francis once revealed that she and Tony Geary received a bottle of champagne and a letter from Princess Diana congratulating them on super-couple Luke and Laura’s legendary wedding.
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