♥ Finally...An In-Depth Interview
With Drake Hogestyn...
Cover Story - Behind The Smiles (Roman Brady, DAYS OF OUR LIVES):
Drake Hogestyn is a smooth talker with a bounty of charm. But he is also revealing: about the worlds of acting, athletics and the love of his life.
From A Reporter's Notebook - First Impressions Of Drake Hogestyn:
Terribly handsome but not in a pretty sort of way. Tall, about six feet, evenly tanned from playing ball outdoors, and has bright blue eyes. He's much better looking in person. Long, lean, he doesn't look like he pumps iron.
Hogestyn is at first warm, and once he senses you can appreciate his bawdy sense of humor, his quick wit and puns, he can be crude, open, very passionate and extremely sharp. All his answers are stories because he is a natural storyteller, a master joke teller, and likes being center stage. But Drake doesn't cross over that fine line to become obnoxious. Because he likes spinning a tale so much, he's full of tiny details, dates and offbeat observations. Once he sees that he's grabbed you, his eyes light up and he takes you for a ride. Anyone can tell this man is a born actor.
The Beginning:
"Okay, so it's the fall of 1978 and I run across this splashy article in the newspaper: 'Come out to Hollywood and be a big star, and write a one-hundred-fifty-word essay on why you should.' Columbia Pictures Television was having their annual national talent search and I decided to enter," explains Drake Hogestyn. The question he was answering was: Why did you leave the New York Yankees and your career as a baseball player to become an actor? He could have given a one word answer or a one sentence answer or even a few paragraphs. But because it is Drake Hogestyn talking here (AKA world's best and longest storyteller) his answer took his interviewer through four cups of coffee and a few hours. No one complained. Hogestyn knows how to grab an audience and he loves it. His breakfast remained untouched, as he gathered momentum and enthusiasm.
"Basically, I was going nowhere with the Yankees," he continues, talking rapidly. "I was in baseball for seven years and I got the seven year itch. It was time to change careers and I was too burned out to go to dental school...my original goal, so I filled out the application for Columbia Pictures Television. My full name is Donald Drake Hogestyn, but I signed it Drake Hogestyn."
Two weeks later, Hogestyn received a call from the secretary to Mr. Joshua Shelley, who was running the talent search at Columbia Pictures Television. (Please Note: The word "Columbia" was changed to "Columbia Pictures Television" in several places in this article to keep consistency throughout our website. We always refrain from using short-cuts or abbreviations, even though the magazine chose to do this for space constraints.) Shelley wanted to talk about "Drake's" application. Drake said 'The uh, application, uh, was a joke.' Well, why didn't he come and see Joshua Shelley for an interview, also as a kind of joke? Drake said 'Okay. Ha ha!'
The moment of truth, that is when Hogestyn went from being a bona fide Yankee to a bona fide actor, did not have finesse, although it did have its moments. "Joshua's secretary says, 'He'll be with you in a moment.' So I go into his office and it was like walking to see THE WIZARD OF OZ," Drake relates, clearly enjoying the story. "I was getting leg cramps walking over to him, his office was so huge! He was there with two women associates and said, 'Have a seat.' I said, 'All right.' But there was no seat, the only seat was by the door, so I walk over to the door and pick up the chair and I start walking back across the room and he said 'Settle down.' I thought he said 'set it down!' so I said 'I'll set it down when I'm close enough to hear you!'" Drake pauses, waiting for a reaction. When he sees the reporter smile, he continues, grinning.
"At that point he swiveled around in his chair and looked out the window. I said, 'Hey pal, I thought we were going to talk but if there's a problem, I'm sorry, I'll see you later.' He said, 'Get your ass back here and sit down.' So I sat and we talked for about an hour. He finally said, 'You know what I think? I think you are full of sh## and get out of my office.' I wanted to say 'Fine! I'll see you. But I am going to Venezuela in two days so if you have a change of heart, you better get on the phone and hurry.' I went down in the elevator and I was thinking, 'I should have had lunch with my Dad, rather than come here.' I get out to the street, about to grab a cab, when his secretary comes running out, calling my name. She tells me that Joshua doesn't know what to make of me but he wants to see me again."
Hogestyn went back upstairs, Shelley spun around in his chair and said, 'I've met a lot of people and am perceptive enough to know where they're coming from but I don't know if you're professional enough. I don't know how serious you are.' Drake said he was professional, all Joshua had to do was call the New York Yankees and discover that he was professional enough to be a professional athlete. Shelley thought about that one, then he said, 'I will take you out to Los Angeles and put you in the program.'
For the record, only thirty actors of an aspiring seventy-five-thousand were accepted.
The Middle And Some Prologue:
Once Drake Hogestyn moved to Los Angeles, he decided to give himself seven years to be a working actor. If it didn't work out, he would set himself up as a dentist. Hogestyn might have made a good dentist. He has, by the way, fine teeth. ("I'm the only person in my family who didn't have to get braces. I'm also the only one who didn't get a bicycle or baptized. The three B's.")
Sometimes those seven years moved quickly, like when he was starring in Spic and Span commercials, or in the television productions of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, BEVERLY HILLS COWGIRL BLUES and the CBS series, SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS. But other times they were pretty slow and he'd have to wait tables and think more and more about those days as a Yankee. The memories of playing ball still energize him.
"I loved the Yankees and I always wanted to play for them," Drake says passionately. "I remember sitting in my cell biology class at the University of South Florida (Hogestyn was majoring in microbiology), taking notes with four hundred other students and the professor was writing all these notes on the board when he suddenly turned and said to me, 'Do you really like the Yankees that much?' I was like a speck in the crowd. I said, 'Yeah. I'm going to play for them this year.' Well, I didn't know if I was or wasn't, but I knew everyone was watching me." Drake did play for them, in one of their minor league farm teams in Oneonta, New York.
"Oneonta, New York," Drake remembers like an old song that won't go away. "Fifty-two bars in that town. I came out of college with my hair down to here (he points to his shoulders), mustache, and the first thing they do is take you over to 'Harry's.' Harry gives you a Yankee haircut. No facial hair, no hair over the ears, sideburns to the middle of the ears and then there were the bus rides. Fifteen hours a day of bus rides to games with Staten Island, music just blasting away." Not to mention the groupies. Drake smiles. "All the girls that would hang out around us looked twenty-three or twenty-four but they were twelve or thirteen. You had to be really careful." Hogestyn was. "I don't go anywhere unless I'm prepared for what is going to happen," he says darkly. After years in the minors, Hogestyn was prepared to leave baseball and try another career. The fact that he had a knee injury helped with his decision, and when he was accepted into the Columbia Pictures Television acting program, his career changed.
Perhaps Hogestyn was not quite so ready for Hollywood ("I thought Hollywood was a state"), but acting was a whole other story. Acting was like being on third base. Drake could relate. "On third base you have the rail right there and you have people in the stands calling you names, and if a guy hits a screamer through your legs, you have nowhere to hide. You get pennies thrown at you and a lot of other things thrown at you, too. And you say, 'This is life, it doesn't bother me, tomorrow's another day.' Acting is kind of the same feeling." And storytellers do wonderfully well on stage. It was Drake's arena. Acting classes became a place to learn and shine and grow.
Hogestyn continued to go for auditions and for a year played the brooding brother on SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS who said more with a glance than he could with a word. (Please Note: The words "Seven Brides" were changed to "SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS" in several places in this article to keep consistency throughout our website. We always refrain from using short-cuts or abbreviations, even though the magazine chose to do this for space constraints.) After one year SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS was canceled, and Drake was cast in a pilot that never made it to a series. The seven years were up and Hogestyn was about ready to apply to dental schools when Columbia Pictures Television called him to audition for a part on daytime television. Hogestyn had tested for soaps before. There was a test for RYAN'S HOPE and a test for a role called Kyle Sampson on GUIDING LIGHT, and now this. "It was around Thanksgiving," relates the storyteller, with his hands behind his head, "and I was in a bad frame of mind. I pulled up in my car, boom, sat there, and thought, 'Let's get this over with.' I had started at Columbia Pictures Television and here I was again. I jumped out of my jeep, took a couple of steps and stopped. I said to myself, 'What the hell are you doing, man? If you carried this horse's ass attitude into baseball you never would have even played!' So I backed up, got back into the jeep and said, 'Let's knock them out!'"
Drake met with Doris Sabbagh, Columbia Pictures Television's head of casting. She wanted to know if he would do daytime television. "I said, 'I love daytime television! I tape every show!'" Actually, Hogestyn was not so loquacious, or perhaps so wry. Suffice it to say that his agent had nixed a lot of soap opera parts, but Drake wanted this one. He watched DAYS OF OUR LIVES, then read for the role. The people at Columbia Pictures Television acted as if he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And they had already tested everyone in town. Maybe everyone in the country. They loved Drake but there was a problem: his age. "They want to go older," Doris Sabbagh confided to him. "We'll see. We'll have to test you with Deidre."
Deidre Hall (Marlena Brady), says Drake Hogestyn of his co-star, is one of those people who you feel like you've known your whole life from the moment you meet her. "You work with her for a few minutes and she feels comfortable. She's someone you can joke around with." When the two actors tested together it was magic. Seven years after Drake Hogestyn had given himself an ultimatum - actor or dentist - he took home a role that changed his life. No one, not the writers, not the producers, not his fellow actors, not the magazine editors who claim to know about such things, not the viewers, and certainly not the actor himself was prepared for the way Drake was accepted into the role of Roman Brady. To fill the shoes of any character previously filled by another actor is excruciating, but to do it when the previous actor was Wayne Northrop, beloved by all, is nearly incomprehensible. That Hogestyn achieved his own outstanding popularity is due to three facts: 1) The writers wrote their story in such a way that by the time they admitted Hogestyn was not John Black but Roman Brady, the audience was dying to accept it; 2) Drake refused to imitate any of Northrop's mannerisms or style, making Roman Brady a new mix of gentle romantic and fierce determination; and 3) his chemistry with Deidre Hall sizzled. The return of Roman Brady, as played by Hogestyn, is not the only reason DAYS has been soaring steadily in the ratings, but it has certainly helped.
Still, Hogestyn has not changed. He drives the same car, looks just as devastatingly handsome in his sweatshirts, jeans and sneakers, and maintains a residence in Malibu beach where he can play with his dog, Tyler. He can be a professional flirt with a quick wit and an incredible ability to charm anyone by instinctively knowing what charming is to that person, then becoming it. But there is another side to Drake. "I'm real serious," he admits, suddenly, and all the humor leaves his face. "My teachers never understood that, either. I was always real flippant but there is a very serious side to me that I mask very well." He pauses. "You might also not know that I'm a good friend, but I only have three or four of them, and I'm a good boyfriend. I've got a steady love."
A Love Story:
When this interview first took place Hogestyn did not want to talk on the record about that steady love, but several months passed and he finally agreed to. Drake has known Victoria Post since they were both fifteen years old. (OOPS! This is wrong. Drake was fifteen but Victoria was only twelve when they first met.) He was playing ball on the south side of Fort Wayne, Indiana, at McNolan Park when a beautiful girl (Vicky) and her friend, Lisa Miller, driving a bicycle built for two, rode it across the infield, causing the umpire to call "Time out! And get those girls off the field!" (OOPS! This is wrong. LOL, you can only "drive" a motor vehicle, and the only bike that is motorized is a motorcycle. It should say that the girls were "riding a bicycle built for two" not "driving a bicycle built for two.") It has been a powerful relationship with breakups and reconciliations, promises made and broken, undying love, one baby daughter, misunderstandings and enormous attempts to bridge gaps. It is the stuff mini-series are made of, and when Drake was finally ready to talk about it, as he was that July day, one was struck by the details, dates and trivia he could easily recall when it came to Victoria. Quite simply, she is in his blood.
Second Impressions From A Reporter's Notebook:
It is a few months later. Drake has since become one of the hottest commodities in daytime television. I have seen the response he gets from a crowd and how he plays to them. There was that time in Virginia when fans stuck strawberries in his mouth and he let them suck them out. He loved the attention and he eagerly gave them what they wanted.
Today Drake is dressed in jeans, a grey sweatshirt, and tennis shoes. He is affectionate, playful, full of filthy jokes. But when we sit down in an office to discuss Victoria, a subject that was "verboten" the first time around, he is a little more pensive, a little less smooth. The storyteller in him is still present, maybe it's even a defense against painful memories. He certainly knows every line in the love story of Drake and Victoria, and he's impressively candid, but this time he doesn't seem to have all the answers. Drake is a little less sure and a little more vulnerable.
The Facts:
After years of romantic volatility, Drake was determined that he was going to be a dentist and Victoria should become a dental hygienist so they could work together. But baseball stopped the plan. Hogestyn headed for Florida, college, and an athletic scholarship. Vicky, in fact, did study to become a dental hygienist at Purdue, and is one today. Their visits with each other were few and there was a big breakup on the Fourth of July, 1975.
"Famous final scene," Drake tells, rocking in his chair, grinning despite the painful memory. "I drove eighteen straight hours from Tampa, Florida, to Fort Wayne, Indiana. (Please Note: The words "Fort Wayne" were changed to "Fort Wayne, Indiana" in several places in this article to keep consistency throughout our website. We always refrain from using short-cuts or abbreviations, even though the magazine chose to do this for space constraints.) Needed my woman. Dawn was breaking and I made arrangements so we could talk. I had to scale a tree and break through a window. It was my last plea to her to say, 'I know things aren't working, but things are going to work.' I had already been drafted by the Cardinals but I had a serious knee injury. She said, 'You went to school to play baseball. You had a really good shot at it but things didn't work out. Maybe it was designed that way for a reason. If you come home now you can fall into an easy groove and work for your Dad, blah, blah, blah...' I said, 'Is this an ultimatum? I don't like ultimatums.' She said, 'Nobody does, that's why they work.' A classic line, and I'm sitting in the car, and she's sitting on the curb and we looked at each other and a heartbreaking song came on the radio. Bad timing. And that was it."
And then Drake Hogestyn says he cried and after he cried he decided that he was going to show her. He was going to be the best third baseman anywhere and he would not come crawling home to Fort Wayne, Indiana. "I had it all planned out," he admits now with a laugh. "I was going to make it and eventually we would get back together. I'd take her to the old hotel in Indiana where we used to go and have long talks. Hey, what is love, anyway?" he asks suddenly. "Isn't it who breaks your heart? Going through heartbreak? Heartbreak," believes Drake Hogestyn, "is July 4, 1975."
It was not until 1981 that Drake and Victoria spoke again. "She called," he points out. "I'd say it was June 18, 1981, a couple of days after her birthday. She called about five in the morning, Los Angeles time. I was in shock. Had to recover. I wanted to carry on a sane conversation. There was so much to say but I couldn't say anything. And it was so unlike her to call, she was always so stubborn and we both had a lot of pride. We would go for weeks after a fight without calling each other, and then we'd sit by the phone, waiting for the other to call. Anyway, that night the operator said, 'We have a collect call from Victoria in Indiana, will you accept?' So I said, 'Yeah.' Immediately. It would have been so easy to pour my soul out at that moment but I remained distant and cool." Drake saw her later that fall at their tenth year high school reunion.
"She said I was a jerk," he laughs. "I bought her a yellow rose like I always did. The last of the romantics. I couldn't say a word. There were a lot of nods. Yes. No. But I just checked the situation out and I realized in a second I could get in way over my head all over again. I didn't know if I wanted that. But I knew I still loved her the moment I saw her."
They didn't talk for another year. Occasionally, Victoria would call, but Drake was still afraid of being hurt. On Valentine's Day, 1983, after he had finished SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS, Drake decided to call. "I said, 'Happy Valentine's Day, baby,' and she cried. She said she knew if I was going to call it would be that night."
Whatever else went on in that conversation, it convinced Drake, finally, that Victoria was who he wanted and who he wanted to be committed to. Until that time he had involved himself in convenient relationships, with little pain and no love. But at last, sure of his feelings, he began to push the relationship to move faster. There were more trips to Fort Wayne, Indiana and Victoria was flying west more frequently. A few times he asked her to stay, but she wasn't ready. Still, Drake insists that they will be together. Victoria knows him better than anyone else. She is the only woman he has ever opened up to. She is much more opinionated than he, and more calm. "In a lot of ways she's very different from me, but you know, it's hard to describe...I can't even describe what she looks like. She's very beautiful, but I can't describe her to people. Think about that," he nods. "This whole thing...it was love at first sight," he adds quietly, "and it's bigger than both of us."
While Victoria is proud of Drake's success, she is not awed by it, either. Her usual response to his question, 'Did you see the show today?' is, 'You were good,' so he doesn't ask anymore. And with more and more trips to Malibu, it is safe to say she is testing a permanent move. Hogestyn believes that when they do decide to live together, it will be Victoria's decision. "She'll have the final say in that, as most women usually do."
But have things gotten any easier than when they first met? Drake twists in his chair. "I think they're easier," he says slowly. "I don't have any problems. It's kind of a funny relationship because I don't really have any arguments with her, which sounds sort of dumb. But we don't fight. Figure that one out. There's nothing major to fight about. That's a pretty good sign." Drake falls silent again, then says, "Victoria fills an area. She fills an area that's been void since she left and when she's back it's full again. And the beach," says Drake Hogestyn, very softly, "looks better."
Meredith Brown, SOAP OPERA DIGEST, 11/4/86
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