It's tough to hear the news that a show is letting you go because your character will be biting the dust, and it must be doubly as hard to learn the news two times in one year. But such was the fate for Jeffrey Vincent Parise (ex-Carlos Rivera), who was just killed off the show for a second May in a row.
"I had just done the jail scenes with Finola [Hughes, Anna], so I was flying high, and Frank [Valentini, our executive producer] pulled me aside. For a second, I thought he was just going to say, 'Those scenes were really awesome,' and he said, 'So, I have to talk to you,'" he told Soap Opera Digest of learning the news that Carlos was going to die yet again. "It felt so much like déjà vu; I said, 'No,' and he said, 'Yeah, you're going to die.' I kept saying, 'You're kidding. Come on, tell me you're kidding,' and he was like, 'No, I'm not kidding.' I was just like, 'Oh, no! Why?' He said, 'It's just for the story. We kind of painted Carlos into a corner, and somebody has to die.'"
However, as many GH fans will say, although Carlos was a bad guy, he was still very much loved -- even though he was the one who killed Duke (Ian Buchanan). "I think a lot of the credit goes to the writers for that, because they wrote him, ultimately, as a lover," Parise opines. "And the funny thing about Carlos is, he had all of his love scenes with Sabrina [Teresa Castillo] outside of the bedroom. I think a lot of the GH fans were able to see Carlos's complexities, and they didn't just see him in black and white. Carlos grew into my favorite kind of character to watch and now, that I like to play, which is, yes, he does bad things, but he's a thousand shades of gray. I got to exorcise all my demons playing Carlos, but also, he's not just this horrible, evil person. I couldn't wait to see what happened next with Carlos, there was never a dull moment. But I have to say, I don't mind fans not liking my character. That's just me doing my job, because he's a bad guy."
But that doesn't make it any easier for the actor to say goodbye. "It just seemed like there was so much possibility left for Carlos," he muses. "I get that being an actor, jobs get done and you go onto another project, but it's not only the people from the show that I'm going to miss, it's the character of Carlos. But the ending, and everything leading up to it, I thought was really exciting and dynamic."
And the end for Parise himself was also quite exciting, because the cast and crew threw him a surprise goodbye party. "When I finished my last scene, I was going to try to just leave, but I was called back up to the set to do a promo piece. Alice Volonino, our wardrobe woman, was kind of like, 'Here, I'll take your stuff,' and she was acting kind of strange," he recalls. "Then she walked me onto the stage and they had shut down production, and all the cast and crew was there, and they had a little going-away thing for me. It was funny because Carlos was stabbed with Helena's dagger and Frank gave me the dagger to cut the cake with. It was awesome, and he gave this really wonderful and touching speech about Carlos and about me and I couldn't have thought of a better way [to say good-bye]. Frank said, 'You know, you were supposed to come on for a few months, and three years later you've done over 150 episodes. You've come into our artistic community and touched each and every one of us. We've learned from you and I hope you've learned from us.' He said, 'We're in a very busy week and we've been having 12-hour days, but I felt like we had to stop production for a few moments to acknowledge you.' I was fighting back tears."
For more from Parise on his second GH exit, check out SOD's original interview here.
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