ZDF-online: Mr. McCook, how would you describe your role in "The bold and the
beautiful"?
McCook: I'm playing Eric Forrester, a designer and artist, who's producing a
distinguished fashion. You designate Giorgio Armani as example for
this figure.
ZDF-online: You play this role for 15 years. Has Eric changed during this time?
McCook: In the beginning Eric was a bit stiff. Warm-hearted but quite humorless. This has changed during the last years. He's now more cheerful but show now and then some unsureness, which is typically for an artist. From the beginning I was charmed by the artistic temperament of this figure.
ZDF-online: How did you get the role?
McCook: I met William Bell in 1975, the inventor of the soap, as an actor in "The Young and the Restless", a Bell-soap too, opted out. I got the role. The soap wasn't so wicked as I imagined in the beginning. As William Bell and his wife Lee Phillip Bell developed "The bold and the beautiful", they asked me and Susan Flannery if we want to play the main characters. They knew that they will have a safe time with us as well versed actors
in the beginning of the new soap.
ZDF-online: Why did you accept this offer?
McCook: When you mean that the leading role in a daily soap is normally for an actor the opposite of a good role, than you're right. On one hand it's a curse. But it has great advantages too. The safety for example. After 3/4 years the contract will always be renewed and that's for a family man very reassuring. But the plot of "The bold and the beautiful" has much quality because it's set in Beverly Hills and in the fashion scene. That's why and because of the cast mates it's fun. Otherwise I wouldn't come every damned day.
ZDF-online: Do you keep some time for other interests?
McCook: Yes and now and then I have to do other things and when it's only for a
week. I come from the Broadway, I'm a musical-actor, and that's why I appear today sometimes in a musical.
By Fr�d�ric Ulferts