Between the Sheets
With Joe and Siobhan
Source Unknown, 1982
by Suzanne Weyn
Article Provided By SabrinaIf you've ever wondered what it's like to make love with Roscoe Born, ask his co-star, Marg Helkenberger. She blushes when she says, "Roscoe's so sexy...it's embarassing!"
"I warned both my parents. Beware!" laughs Marg Helkenberger, the strawberry-blonde actress who portrays the irrepressible Siobhan Ryan of Ryan's Hope. She is recalling how she felt about her first steamy (literally) love scenes with co-star Roscoe Born, who plays Joe, her ne'er-do-well husband.
"At first I was uncomfortable," she recalls. "For instance, the first love scenes we had started off in the shower. It was ridiculous because, although I had something on, once it got wet it was pretty see-through. Granted, you didn't see anything on camera, but there were stagehands and everyone else, so..." Her voice trails off as she stops to recall the embarassment for a moment.
"That was pretty bad!" she says with a smile. "There I was trying to pretend that everything was cool. It was tough. But now we've done so many of those scenes it's kind of like old hat now. Roscoe is really easy to work with." Marg admires her leading man's professionalism. "Roscoe is very funny," she observes. "He makes things very comfortable. Yeah, he is sexy, but that's not what he's there to do. Here's there, primarily, to play a role convincingly, which he does.
"What makes those scenes racy is the implication that Joe and Siobhan have been in bed for days. It's funny what they - the censors or the moral majority or whoever - what they decide can be aired and what can't. Sometimes I think their decisions are strange. I mean, you can't say damn or hell, but you can have a couple who are in bed for weeks on end. It doesn't really make much sense."
Back in North Bend, Nebraska, her forewarned parents have been able to take their daughter's on-screen cavorting in stride. "I think while they were watching, they were probably thinking, 'Is that our daughter?' but they're really excited. It's funny, when I call them or they call me. They always want to know the inside scoop on the characters. You know, the gossipy kind of stuff."
Like the character she plays, Marg was raised to believe in traditional values and this, she says, helps her understand the Ryan clan. "I was raised a very strong Catholic and there's quite a bit of naivete that goes along with that. So with living in Nebraska and the whole Midwestern conservative thing, I can relate to the Ryans. She reflects a moment and then adds, I disagree with a lot of those things now, but I understand them."
The string of events that transformed Marg from a small town girl who worked in the meat packing plant during her summer vacations from school to a successful actress living in Manhattan were relatively swift.
However, life in the Big Apple has not come as a total culture shock to Marg since she had, as she says, "Chicago as a stepping stone," while attending Northwestern.
And Marg also has, as she puts it, "a male friend" in the city, who was a former classmate at Northwestern. She admits, "He's definitely an added attraction to being in New York."
So, with Roscoe Born making her career struggles on Ryan's Hope easier, and with her male buddy making her personal life in the big city pleasurable, Marg is enjoying her life to the fullest.
And she's certainly a lot luckier than most young women starting out - she's got two men in her life! Who could ask for anything more!
