Stephen Nichols, Star of The Week
Soap Opera Magazine, February 16, 1999

After 18 years of holding captive withing him the truth of Nikolas' paternity, GH's Stefan was able to shed the nearly unbearable weight of the armor that had for so long entombed him. Finally liberated, Stefan felt Nikolas slip into his newfound father's arms, granting him the absolution he had hoped for above all else.

For his portrayal of an intensely, perhaps even pathologically, guarded man, who with a single truth had his whole life turned upside-down, Soap Opera Magazine names Stephen Nichols (Stefan) Star of the Week.

"The first day when Nikolas came to ask Stefan if he was his father, they weren't sure about how things were left,"
Nichols explains. "After he left, Stefan had a couple of days of worrying about whether Nikolas was going to reject him completely or come back. That was a nice set-up to keep the tension there, and I must give the writers credit, particularly Patrick Mulcahey, who wrote both of those shows. They were really beautiful scenes, poetic and honest. A situation like that could have been very difficult if it weren't in the words. Without those scripts being as good as they were, I would have been lost."

But the relationship between writer and actor is symbiotic, because one without the other can never truly resonate. Nichols needed great words, but those words could only
be brought to life by an actor of Nichols' caliber. It is even awe-inspiring when a character can move a viewer even though it's difficult, if not impossible, for a viewer to relate
to the character. Let's face it, the Cassidines aren't exactly the next door neighbors.

Nichols laughs as he says, "you have to believe like a child does. Children play pretend. One says 'Let's play Romeo and Juliet today-- I'll be Romeo, and you be Juliet'-- and the other kid says, 'okay'. It's that childlike belief in the given circumstances ...that's what it's about. My little girl will go on for hours and hours with her friends, making up the most
incredible stories, and they believe every bit of it. So in a way, you just have to throw away the logical mind and just believe the circumstances. And the feelings are universal. Anyone can hook into the fact that, 'This is my son and I haven't been able to call him 'son' all of his life. From the day I saw this little baby boy, I have not been able to tell him.'"

Having carried all this preparation around, it was a great release for Stefan and Nichols both, when the truth was told.

"It's not every day I go to work and have a moment about to happen that is so important to the story, to me and to the
other people I'm working with." Nichols says, "This was one of those times, and I'm very grateful for the opportunity. They're few and far between."

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