WEEKLY: You said that the Mason/Julia and Mason/Mary stories were  among your favorite. What was your least favorite storyline? 
 Davies: Lily Light. And I think the public would agree with me.  When they were trying in vain to repair the damage done by killing Harley  Kozak off (ex-Mary), Mason became involved with an evangelist. They put me  with this girl (Lynn Clark), who, bless her heart, was a very sweet person  and not a bad actress, but the only reason they cast her was because she  looked like Robin Mattson (ex-Gina). They thought that because she looked  like Robin that they should make her Gina's illegitimate daughter. I was  dragged into it because I was at sea after Mary got killed off. I had no  chemistry with this girl - she was 12 years old or something. But it  didn't last long, which was the good thing about it. 

 WEEKLY: Who did you have the most fun working with? 
 Davies: Probably Nancy Grahn (ex-Julia). We also wanted to kill  each other, but in terms of sheer fun, she was probably the most fun to  work with. Followed by Robin Mattson, who was a lot of fun. A Martinez  (ex-Cruz) was fun, too, simply because our characters were so antithetical  to each other. He was all about morality and being the good guy; I was the  Machiavelli counterpoint. 

 WEEKLY: Do you have any funny on-set stories? 
 Davies: You're talking ancient history now. (laughs) I have  images of me trying to threaten my father, my first father (played by  Peter Mark Richman, ex-C.C.), with a bottle that I was supposed to break.  But after it shattered I was left holding the tiniest piece. Another funny moment was Jed Allan (ex-C.C.) sitting up in a coffin arguing with a director,  who was in the booth talking over the PA, when Jed was going through a low  blood sugar phase. That was a funny image. There were a lot of them. 

 WEEKLY: As a member of the original cast, do you remember it being  difficult launching a new soap? 
 Davies: It seemed like work to me, but the executives were panicked  and threatened that we would go live if we didn't start getting the shows  in the can faster. That's one reason why they gave people like A, Marcy  (Walker, ex-Eden) and myself so much leeway - we weren't screwing up. They  had a lot of - I don't want to call them amateurs, but they were certainly  novices, and they were taking up a lot of set time when we didn't have it  to give. Those of us who didn't screw up, were given a lot of the load of  the show. That earned us favors later on in terms having the freedom to  rework the script. 

 WEEKLY: There were lots of backstage shakeups during Santa  Barbara's run. Did that influence your decision to leave? 
 Davies: No. If I was going to leave, it would have been when they  got rid of the Dobsons (creators Bridget and Jerome) the first time. But,  [contractually], I couldn't have left if I wanted to. I don't know if the  show ever completely recovered from them leaving, simply because a lot of  the shows irreverence went with them. Luckily we still had good writers  that kept the show going, in spite of some shaky people at the helm for a  while. We were getting back on track not long before I left under Jill  Phelps' (now executive producer at General Hospital) guidance. 

 WEEKLY: So your contract was up and you decided to travel around  the world with Todd McKee (ex-Ted)? 
 Davies: Basically, I was burnt out. The show was getting too  important in some ways, and I wasn't having fun. Everything pointed to it  being time to move on. So I decided to take a trip, and then come back,  get married and have babies. 

 WEEKLY: Santa Barbara had a huge following overseas. Did a  lot of people recognize you? 
 Davies: It was cool to be a major celeb over there and then be able  to leave it behind. We got on a subway one time and there was our picture  all of the subway. It was a little freaky, but it was fun. 

 WEEKLY: Carrington Garland (ex-Kelly) said she met up with you guys  in Switzerland. 
 Davies: Right before the holidays, we were in Kenya and our next  stop was Bombay, so we decided to go back and hang out in Paris and  Switzerland for Christmas. We didn't want to spend Christmas in Bombay. My  late uncle had a condo in Switzerland, so that's were we spent the holiday  and Carrington came over. 

 WEEKLY: She said you guys went parapunting off a cliff. 
 Davies: Yes, we leapt off the Alps, which was an interesting  experience for someone with acute acrophobia. It was fun. I'd do it again  - maybe. I also ran with the bulls [in Pamplona], but that was a year  later after our trip. Actually, I ran from the bulls. I have  longer legs than most of the Spaniards and managed to stay out of the way.  

 WEEKLY: Who do you keep in touch with? 
 Davies: I haven't talked to Todd in a couple months. We don't  socialize much. After six months of traveling together, we got sick of  each other. (laughs) We have some amazing stories to tell from that  trip, unfortunately you can't print most of them. But I talk to Nancy and  A. We use A's daughter in our plays. 

 WEEKLY: You have two theatre companies? 
 Davies: Yes, the Santa Susanna Repertory Company and the Kingsmen  Shakespeare Company, that we spun off from it. They're in Thousand Oaks,  Calif. 

 WEEKLY: Do you play an active role in the day-to-day operations? 
 Davies: I have it set up so that I mostly get to act and direct  now. I have a wonderful co-artistic director at Kingsmen who sees to it  that all the hard work gets done. And Santa Susanna is run by Rick  Rhodes, who used to do the music for Santa Barbara, and Susan  Turner, a woman who is chief cook and bottle washer for both companies. 

 WEEKLY: You were on The Bold and the Beautiful for a while,  subbing for Ronn Moss (Ridge)? 
 Davies: Ronn went to do a mini-series in Europe and they offered me  a very nice deal to come in and like make out with Hunter Tylo (Taylor). I  thought: I can do that. That wasn't hard. 

 WEEKLY: What was that experience like? 
 Davies: It was a little tricky taking over for Ronn because we are  very different actors and they kept writing for Ronn. It was like working  with handcuffs on. But the overall experience was good because the Bells  are great people and nobody knows daytime better than they do. 

 WEEKLY: Tell me about the Russian TV series that you are working  on. 
 Davies: It's called Force of One. It's about a Russian  detective working in L.A. as a consultant to the L.A.P.D. I play the guy  who hires him. 

 WEEKLY: Do you have to speak Russian? 
 Davies: No, it will be subtitled. It will truly be an international  series in that it is going to be shot in both languages. 

 WEEKLY: And you are married to Holley and have two sons? 
 Davies: I'm divorced, but we are under the same roof. It's very  amicable. They were living in their own place for a while, but now they  are back here for various reasons. It's actually been quiet fun. 

 WEEKLY: What's fatherhood like? 
Davies: Fatherhood is great. Thatcher is almost 12 and  Nathan is 10. Thatcher is really into gardening, which is one of my  passions, and Nathan likes to fish. He also enjoys basketball and  skateboarding, but I'm not good at those. I do play basketball with him,  but if I weren't 4-feet taller than him, he'd beat me every time. 

 WEEKLY: Would you consider returning to a soap? 
 Davies: Oh, yeah. It's funny, in the past whenever they've been  ready, I've been committed somewhere else. And when I've been ready, they  haven't been. It was a timing thing. 

 WEEKLY: Any show in particular? 
 Davies: I would love to work with Jill again. And I'm old friends  with Lucky Gold, the headwriter for Guiding Light. It would be  great fun to work with him again. That would involve a move to New York,  but I'm not adverse to that right now. My life is in a good place in terms  of flexibility. The kids are a consideration, but they are pretty  adventurous.