Eric Sheffer Stevens talks about the unusual situation facing Dr. Reid Oliver on “As the World Turns”

I’ll be posting today’s As the World Turns scenes involving Dr. Reid Oliver and Luke Snyder shortly.

But first I wanted to share some of this Soap Opera Weekly interview with actor Eric Sheffer Stevens about the strange (and some would say unlikely, silly and wacko) twist the plot has taken.

The hospital chief of staff Bob has given his top surgeon an ultimatum: he must choose between his job and Luke Snyder.

Sheffer said with a laugh: “I don’t know. It seems like a bizarre choice. When we rehearsed it, Don [Hastings, Bob] said the line to me and Van [Hansis, Luke] was in there and he goes, “Well, take the hospital!”

“It’s a very dramatic choice to be presented with, so Reid struggles through that,” he added. “It seems to be a very irrational time for him, so there’s no point in trying to think through it. It’s more of an emotional, physical attraction-based time than a time for making rational decisions. It’s probably a time he’ll look back on and go, ‘Wow. What was going on with me then?”

“He’s just sort of [caught up] in this jumble of things happening to him right now,” Eric says. “He’s almost not himself, but I think that’s because it’s a very unfamiliar place for him: to be so consumed with somebody else. And so it’s dominating his thoughts, all his decision-making processes. … People behave like idiots when they’re in these situations.”

I personally think it’s the writers who are idiots for coming up with such a stupid plot device.