Late-breaking News
For Chase Coleman (ex-garrett, ONE LIFE TO LIVE), the prospect of playing Y&R’S hit-producing rocker, Tanner Watts, had instant appeal. “It was a matter of my agent and my manager telling me, ‘Hey. There’s this role. It’s this rock star musician,’ ” he recounts. “The character description I read reminded me a lot of myself in the sense of what I’m doing with my music and stuff like that. I’m a musician and an actor, and music is very important to me.”
However, there was a proposed element of Tanner that Coleman found disconcerting. “It said, ‘Prototype: Chris Martin,’ ” he shares. “As soon as I read that, I immediately told them, ‘Listen. I’m a huge fan of Coldplay. I love Chris Martin. There’s a lot of pop music that I love; however, I’m not a pop singer. My music is more rock. You probably would classify it as more alternative rock.’ And they were okay with that.”
Since Coleman is also in a band, Mercy Mode, he submitted footage of himself performing at concerts along with a tape of his acting for Y&R to consider. “I got the call maybe two days later that they wanted me to come over to CBS and talk,” he smiles. “It was not an audition. I went in and sat on a couch around maybe seven or eight different people; producers, the EP, Casting, etc. They asked me to sing, so I picked up my guitar and I played them one of my songs, ‘Lost In You’.”
During the meeting, Coleman, who has appeared on GOSSIP GIRL and THE ORIGINALS, never mentioned his start on OLTL. “That was a very long time ago,” he explains. “It was a smaller character and I’ve done so many other big things compared to that. I think they were weighing in those things a little more, as well as my music, rather than my previous soap experience, which was 14, 15 years ago.”
After the powwow, it wasn’t long before Coleman learned of Y&R’S decision. “It was the same day, I think two hours later, I got a call from my manager and agent saying [Y&R] wanted to offer me the part,” he recalls. “I was like, ‘Hell, yeah! Let’s do this!’ ”
On his first day, Coleman met co-star Cait Fairbanks (Tessa) and they hit it off.
“Cait is extremely cool. I love her,” he enthuses. “I’m having a blast with her. We laugh, we joke. She’s an amazing actress and such an amazing musical talent. Her voice is out of this world and she can play guitar great, too. Playing with her is amazing and fun. It’s been so fun working with her on the show.”
Although Tanner was conceived as a short-term
role, Coleman says he would stick around as long as Y&R needed him. “I didn’t know I was going to have this much fun,” he observes. “On day one, just meeting everybody, how everything flows and the choices I get to make and the character himself, it’s all been amazing. I would be 100 percent down for however long they would like to extend Tanner.”