Weekly: What were most of these fights about?
Grahn: Stupid stuff. Who got control, who got their way.
Davies: You get too attached to your character after four or five years. I used to [portray] this great, mischievous naughty guy, and then suddenly they had me folding diapers. I was like,"There has to be more to this guy's day."
Grahn: And Julia was too busy following him around, begging for his attention. I thought: After four years either this guy marries her or she finds a new boyfriend. I won that battle, and he got mad. I completely understand that there is nothing worse than becoming domesticized; it will kill your character. It is a lovely thing in real life, but it's not a good thing to become too domesticized.

Weekly: How did you bury the hatchet?
Grahn: Time.
Davies: All that stuff that seemed so important at the time wasn't — especially after having children. It was funny, we ran into each other at an audition and Terry Lester, who replaced me, was there and we all laughed about it. Nancy and I went out for dinner and that was pretty much it.
Grahn: It wasn't any big deal. We were probably young and dramatic. I was.
Davies: It was a little blown out of proportion.
Grahn: When we did Santa Barbara we were there, as I said, 16 hours every single day with that horrid schedule, and partly we were just finding a way to amuse and entertain ourselves because it was boring to be there that many hours. It was more than being married. Married couples don't spend that much time together.
Davies: You suffer from [low] blood sugar, fatigue...
Grahn: You were waiting for something to happen so you would have something to do. And he has great fun sticking my pigtails in the inkwell. When I am PMS-ing that is not funny.
Davies: That is the easiest time to do it. I could do it with a raised eyebrow.
Grahn: Back then I was PMS-ing every day. Now, it is just once a month.
Davies: She evened those hormones out a little bit.

Weekly: What did you learn from working with each other?
Grahn: It was the most realistic, interesting relationship I could have played. That is why I stayed so long. My intention was to stay on the soap for a year and a half, because not only were Chuck (Pratt) and Bob (Guza) writing but Patrick Mulcahey was writing the dialogue, and to me he is as good as Tennessee Williams. I was completely captivated and challenged by him, so it was like good rep theatre. It was not soapy. It was paralleling my own personal experiences as well. Patrick gave me the words that I wish I had in my real life, so by going through this cathartic relationship for four years I truly did learn something about myself and men and women.
Davies: I didn't learn a damn thing (laughs). No, I learned how to pick battles. A lot of it I learned in retrospect.
Grahn: He was much better about it than me. Back then everything was a battle, and he would pick and choose them. I have learned now to pick and choose them.

Weekly: How have the both of you changed?
Davies: Some days I don't think we have changed a bit.
Grahn: I have different motivations for the things that I am doing. Back then it was the art of it, it had to be true and had to have worked. That is still very important, but I have a much better sense of humor. This is the greatest job in the world to have. There is nothing more important to me than being a mother, so already that changes everything. You put up with a lot more.
Davies: It is a great job under any circumstances. Mother/father or not, we are extremely well rewarded for work that is not that difficult in the work sense of the word. It's a specific talent to be able to turn that into something that resembles real life. But it is not hard work if you can do it; it's hard work if you don't know how to or if you have a bad memory. That doesn't mean that I don't have respect for the work or don't respect the people I work with, because I do. We have a remarkable cast at this point in time, so we are lucky in that sense too.

Weekly: Why do you think you have such great chemistry on-screen?
Grahn: We are very alike and very different. And we are very male and very female.
Davies: She laughs at my jokes, so that's good.
Grahn: I can't get away with too much with him. Wally (Kurth, Ned) is more of a softy. Lane will kick my ass, and then I'll kick his. And then we will make up.

Weekly: Do you think a psychiatrist is the best man for Alexis?
Grahn: Yes, because I love the duplicity of her. She is so completely smart and rational and compartmentalized, she can think clearly for other people, but she is a total loon. That makes her interesting.
Davies: He knows it. He sees all of her issues. He doesn't tell her everything he knows, but he sees it before she realizes it. But he is still attracted to her, which is what makes it fun.
Grahn: They both come from fractured families, so maybe they see a mirror image of each other.

Weekly: I hope Cameron doesn't want to get married.
Grahn: I don't want to get married either, so this time I am on his side.

This article originally appeared in the May 27, 2003 issue of Soap Opera Weekly.