Days of Our Lives’ Bryan Dattilo Remembers Patrick Muldoon And Their Real-Life Bond (Exclusive)
When Bryan R. Dattilo joined Days of Our Lives in 1993, he was thrust into storyline with the late Patrick Muldoon, who played Austin Reed, Lucas’s romantic rival/half brother. Behind the scenes, Dattilo forged a fast friendship with Muldoon that stood the test of time. The actor opened up to Soap Opera Digest about the loss of his friend and co-star.
Brotherly Love
The actor has many fond memories of Muldoon from their early Salem days. “I don’t think he ever called me Bryan in the whole time we worked together,” recalls Dattilo. “He always called me Lucas. He used to say, ‘Bro, you are Lucas! You’re not even acting!’ And I’d be like, ‘No, my name is Bryan and I am acting.’ He’d say, ‘No, bro, you’re Lucas! You’re going to be playing Lucas when you’re 50!’ And I remember saying, when I was 21, ‘No, way, Pat. I’m not playing Lucas when I’m 50. There’s no way!’ And here I am, 55, and I’m still playing Lucas [laughs]. Pat was right!”
Dattilo says that when he learned of Muldoon’s passing, “It was like getting hit in the gut. It’s a really tough one. 57 years was not enough for Pat Muldoon.”
The two actors worked together closely in the landmark Austin/Carrie/Lucas/Sami triangle that dominated DAYS in the mid-1990s, and during that time, “I used to go into his room all the time to run lines or just hang out,” Dattilo says. “He loved hairspray, and he used to refer to his hair as a lid. He used to tell me that I was the only one who had a bigger lid than he did. He’d say, ‘Dude, what’s up with your lid today?’ And I’d be like, ‘My lid is fine. Leave my lid alone!’ And then he’d mess with my hair, or he’d stand outside of the bathroom and yell at me for not washing my hands. I’d be like, ‘I washed my hands! Feel them, they’re wet!’ He was always trying to throw salt on my game in the funniest way, and I would try to get back at him. I became the practical joker on the set because of Pat Muldoon messing with me from the very beginning.”
Dattilo thinks their bond was so immediate because “we related guy-to-guy. We were very similar in our personal lives. We both came from sports. He came from football, I came from baseball. He liked to go to the Playboy Mansion, I liked to go to the Playboy Mansion. So it really worked out for us as friends, too, to bond and hang out. We would run into each other all the time at night clubs. He’d be like, ‘Lucas, what are you doing here, bro? You’re too small!’ And I’d be like,’Shut up, dude, I’m 24. Let me go out. Let me live a little!’ ‘Nah, Lucas, go home and study your lines [laughs]!'”
Connected Four
Behind Muldoon’s penchant for jokes was “a great guy with a great heart,” Dattilo declares. “He would joke constantly, but then sometimes he would break down and get serious, and the serious Pat Muldoon was a really understanding, sweet, nice, deep-thinking guy. Pat loved to have a great time, and that’s what I loved about him because I loved to have a great time. When he was a serious actor, Pat was a serious actor. When he was joking, he was the funniest. When he was emotional, he was one of the most emotional. He could pick any level he wanted to act on, and I always admired that about him. When he would mess up a line, he would just make it his own. He would never stop tape and be like, ‘Oh sorry.’ He would just go off on a tangent and then he would be like, ‘I was waiting for you guys to stop me!’ And [the director] would be like, ‘Well, no, we liked it!’ He was a great guy to have on the set.”
As they navigated soap stardom together, Dattilo and Muldoon also grew close to women in their storyline, Christie Clark (Carrie) and Alison Sweeney (Sami). “We were quite a foursome,” Dattilo says fondly. “Sweeney, at that time, was in and out of school because she was a youngster, so she wasn’t in on some of our theatrics when we first started, but I had acting class with Christie Clark growing up, so we knew each other before [DAYS], and Pat and Christie really got along. Christie would just look at him and laugh hysterically for hours to the point that she was crying. Pat was just relentless when he knew he had an audience!
“He and Christie had a real special connection,” Dattilo continues. “I was always kind of jealous of the way they got along because they hung out all the time. I would go into Pat’s room and Christie would be in there. I’d go into Christie’s room and Pat would be in there. I was like, ‘Dude, are you guys getting married?’ He’d go, ‘Nah, man. We’re best friends!’ Yeah, he was really close to Christie and she really got a kick out of him, and so did Alison. I think Alison had a crush on him. All the girls had a crush on Pat at some point!”
Dattilo even looked to Muldoon for guidance where his own relationships were concerned. “Pat gave me a lot of advice early on in my love life, which really probably messed me up,” he admits. “But I listened to him, because Pat loved his individuality. He loved being independent. He liked the girls that he dated, don’t get me wrong. He just liked being a lone ranger, I think.” Although, the actor recalls with a laugh, “He tried to pick up on my wife when I introduced my wife to him. I was like, ‘Pat, what are you doing?’ He was like, ‘Bro, I’m so much better-looking than you are. She doesn’t like tall guys, she likes short guys?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, she likes short guys.’ There was nothing we couldn’t say to each other! Everything was open.”
No matter where life took them, Muldoon and Dattilo’s bond remained intact. “Even though we weren’t that tight for the last five to eight years, we were so tight before that that it didn’t matter,” the actor says. “Every time I saw him, he was the same person. I’m really going to miss him. For the people that really knew him, there’s a hole.”
Dattilo will even miss teasing Muldoon about his unique sense of fashion. “I had a weird dream about him last night where I was at a party with him and we were hanging out,” he shares. “We were both in our ridiculous tuxes. He hated wearing tuxes — he would always try to spice it up with some kind of color. He was a vest guy. He loved vests and he liked wearing loud hats. He had a whole collection of hats that I called his Duran Duran hats. I was like, ‘Bro, that’s such a Duran Duran hat, get rid of that.’ And he’d go, ‘No, man, this is cool, bro. It’s timeless, bro, timeless!'”
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