In Print
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Above: On the cover of the June 26, 2007 issue of Soap Opera Digest.
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Performer of the Week
Thorsten Kaye (Zach, ALL
MY CHILDREN)
Soap Opera Digest
Published May 27, 2008
For months, fans have been anticipating the inevitable -- Zach's discovery of his wife's de facto infidelity with Aidan -- with a mixture of dread and curiosity. The outing of this explosive secret would surely detonate Zach and Kendall as we knew them. The question was, just how deadly would the blast be? The answer -- smartly written by the AMC team and executed with the utmost sensitivity by Zach's portrayer, Thorsten Kaye -- was one that surely put "Zen" fans' minds at ease.
Zach was determined to move swiftly past this bump in his marital road, but that was easier said than done. Reeling internally despite his outward denials from Kendall's confirmation of a truth he'd suspected but didn't want to face, Zach feigned a happy mood and suffered through an intimate dinner with the wife, Aidan and a blissfully ignorant Greenlee. Back at home, he soothed his hurt by focusing on Kendall's, all tender words and even more tender touches. She pressed him to admit to the rage lurking beneath his placid surface, but he refused, driving her to dump ice water on him to to provoke a human reaction.
The ploy worked, and Kaye dazzled as he peeled back the layers of artificial calm on which Zach had been relying to expose his heartache, his devastation. "You want to know how it feels to picture Aidan's grubby hands caressing your perfect skin?" he challenged, his eyes flickering with sorrow. "It feels," he continued, nearly choking on the words as they escaped his pursed lips, "like a knife in my throat. Over and over and over again. When I get that image in my mind, I can't get it out. And if I'd known that picture was going to be in my mind every second of every day, I would have chosen to stay in that hole in the ground for the rest of my life."
There it was, the admission Kendall knew was true but didn't want to face. The house of cards had fallen, but with both players' cards on the table, the healing could begin. Kaye's astute choices, carefully balancing Zach's desire to protect his wife with a hurt-fueled urge to hurt her back, gave fans just what they needed: an assurance that when it's darkest, dawn is drawing ever nearer.