With Arianne Zucker
■ What were your thoughts moving into a Rafe/nicole romance pretty soon after splitting from Eric? “I’ll always justify the reasons Nicole does what she does. Her relationship with Rafe has been long and ongoing. He did a lot of favors for Nicole when she asked him to pretend to be the father of EJ’S baby. They’ve been friends for a long time. Rafe was in her life and showing up when Eric wasn’t, so it made sense. What made it [bad] was Rafe wasn’t single. He was with Ava. And Nicole was coming off a relationship with Eric. Of course, that made the desire to be with him even bigger. It’s like the poisonous apple. Don’t take a bite.” Are you sad that this has demolished Nicole’s friendship with Ava? “Yes, because I love Tamara [Braun, Ava]. It was like, ‘Oh, no! I’m not going to get to work with you.’ But by no means was this meant to be a betrayal to Ava. It’s not what Nicole meant to have happen. That’s not her m.o. anymore. Nicole’s a better person now. If she was an even better person, she probably wouldn’t have [slept with Rafe], but we need the drama. This story has moved relatively fast and can turn in any way. I try to stay open to that, that maybe we can revisit Nicole and Ava’s friendship again. I love having female relationships on the show, when we get a chance to interact and have some real things go on. There’s got to be a way somewhere down the line where these two [reconcile]. It can be time or there’s a situation where one of them is in trouble and the other one comes to their aid, that somehow they find forgiveness for each other.”