What started out as an unlikely on-screen pairing and friendship several years ago on the daytime drama, General Hospital has flourished, and become something even much greater than that. Knowing they struck gold with their characters being the antithesis of each other – one’s a hit man for God sakes, and the other an awkward computer geek, Steve Burton (Jason) and Bradford Anderson (Spinelli) began to conjure up how they could parlay their on-screen and off-screen friendship into other creative avenues.

As fans of the popular soap stars know, these guys travel around the country performing their comedy act, Stone Cold and the Jackal to packed houses. They have a weekly podcast, now on the Podcast One network, That’s Awesome and have also been concentrating on delivering even more content to their audience via their You Tube page, with their latest collaboration 7 Questions with Steve and Brad; where the two take on some questions and answer them with some clever elements wrapped up inside of each installment.

Not a week can go by without Steve and Bradford releasing something new to whet the appetite and keep engaged their enduring fan base. While everyone is facing together the disruptions in our normal everyday lives due to the coronavirus pandemic, Steve and Bradford are using this time wisely to expand their reach while creating even more fun content within their wheelhouse.  So, who know what could be next, right?

Michael Fairman TV chatted with Steve and Bradford to get the Intel on their success, their new You Tube series via their page, and more.  And of course, we couldn’t let this opportunity go by without putting them in the hot seat and asking our own ‘7 Questions’.  Check out what they had to say below.

Courtesy/YouTube

How did the idea originally come about for 7 Questions with Steve and Brad?  What was the inspiration behind it?

BRADFORD: We want to put out as much content as we can and as much entertainment as we can for people, especially during this time.  We’ve done a lot of work on our Facebook page, and we realized that we make so many videos, why the heck aren’t we putting them on our YouTube page?  With that, Steve kind of had this idea. Steve will talk about his inspirations for the visual component of it, and it was kind of a no-brainer.

I just also would like to know whose idea it was to have the MTV-ish voice-over gal for the interstitials of ‘7 Questions’.  That’s one of my favorite parts, by the way!

STEVE:  That’s me! I’m a kid of the 80s.  I love the 80s.  It’s what our brand has been.  We use a lot of colors that are 80s, and that’s our demographic. They relate to it.  With ‘7 questions’, I had no idea what it was going to be, really.  Bradford and I talk multiple times a day, and we are always thinking of ideas. We do our podcast, “That’s Awesome!” and then, we do a bonus podcast now every week that is 15-20 minutes, and that we put it up on YouTube as well.  With the way things are, we want people to laugh and have fun.  Now, usually Bradford does all of the heavy lifting with the technology.  He edits the podcast, he uploads it, he does all of that stuff, and I’m like, “Let me just try it.”  So, I do the sound effects and graphics in these.  I’m laughing while I do it, so I’m hoping people laugh, too.

BRADFORD:  In the beginning, Steve kind of wanted to make it like a morning show, and it my head, I thought he meant like a morning TV show, so I was a little confused by that! (Laughs) What he meant was like a disc-jockey from the 80s on the radio – the kind of show where they use the silly horns when there is a joke, or a lot of ‘whiz-bang’ sound effect, and stuff like that.  It’s fun to see Steve’s creative self come out and play.

Cpurtesy/YouTube

STEVE: The ‘7 questions’ episode out now with Josh Swickard (Chase, GH), is amazing.  Well, it’s amazing because of the sound effects I put in of course, but it’s also amazing because Josh Swickard is on it. (Laughs)

Photo: PodcastOne

You guys have been able to get along so well it seems from your podcast, to your YouTube videos, to your regular on-screen relationship at GH, and then, you do comedy clubs appearances around the country together.  Why do you think it works so well between the two of you? 

BRADFORD:  That’s a good question.  I think we have very similar goals.  We understand each other’s instincts a little bit.  So, we can navigate.  Sometimes, I can tell when something is going to frustrate Steve.  I steer that around him, and he certainly does the same thing for me.  He knows what frustrates me, and he’ll take care of that.  The cool thing about us is that neither of us are combative people.  We never bring our outside crap into our relationship.  We’re not that kind of people.  We are very positive people, and I think that really helps.

STEVE:  It’s always dangerous to get into business with friends.  That’s the first thing I can say because in the past that’s happened to me, and it hasn’t worked out.  I think Bradford and I just have a great mutual respect for each other.  I don’t want to say that it’s almost like a marriage, but it kind of is, because we are together so much.  We work together, we talk every day, and we are always collaborating on things.  There are always things that come up.  Most people wouldn’t even know the stuff that comes up with the podcast or with the live shows, and it takes a really special partnership to forge through that and still have fun.  That’s what the key is because I know plenty of people who are in business relationships who aren’t happy.  They’re just doing it for business.  If we ever get to that point, he and I just need to walk away.  It’s just a really great relationship where we are continually pushing each other, and where we are continually growing.  I never have to worry about what he is doing, and he never has to worry about what I am doing.

Photo: JimWarren

BRADFORD:  That’s a really big deal.  I’ve never even thought about that because we’ve never had a ‘come to Jesus’ moment where it’s like, “Hey man, you’ve really got to start pulling your weight here.” (Laughs)

Ok guys, I have a lighting round of ‘7 Questions’ for you.  Here we go! Question number 1! What one word describes your initial impression of each other when you first met?

BRADFORD:  “Muscle-y”

STEVE:  That’s not a word, dude!

BRADFORD:   It is.  I made it.

Steve, what’s your one-word initial impression of Bradford when you first met him?

STEVE: “Interesting…”  Can it have an ellipsis after it?

Photo: SBurtonIG

Question number 2: When rehearsing your comedy show, which one of you has the most trouble remembering what comes next?

BRADFORD:  I’m going to say Steve, but there is a caveat.  The way that his set is designed, he does about 20 minutes of just talking.  Mine is song, talk, song.  So, there’s an order for mine… but for Steve, remembering half an hour’s worth of stories is hard.  That’s what I would say.

STEVE:  I would say me, too.  We are both pretty on it with our structure and what comes next pretty naturally, but there’re times when Bradford is like, “Hey, over here.”  What the audience doesn’t see is I go, “Oh yeah!  Hey!”

BRADFORD:  But we’ve been doing this for so long that we’ve both had our senior moments.  Neither of us is immune to a hiccup here and there.

Question 3: You both are super-high energy guys. After your performances, who has more trouble decompressing and coming down to earth after the adrenaline rush of playing in front of a crowd?

BRADFORD:  I can sleep anywhere at any time… so can Steve.

STEVE:  Usually, I can sleep anywhere, but after a show, I’m hyped!  I’m like, “Let’s go!  Where are we going?” Bradford’s like, “Give me a glass of wine, and a nice meal, and I’m going to bed,” and I’m like, “Oh, no, you’re not.  You’re not going anywhere near a bed!  We’re going out.”

BRADFORD:  Part of the problem is that we drink a Five-Hour Energy before the show, and our show is only 3 hours.  There’s that extra 2 hours. (Laughs)

Photo: BAndersonIG

Question 4:  What do your wives; Kiera and Sheree think of your ‘7 Questions’ and your comedy show? 

BRADFORD:  I was nervous the first time my wife came to our comedy show, because she’s actually a pretty talented comedian.  She knows comedic timing really well.  The first time Kiera ever saw our act was when she helped us do a GH Fan Club Weekend show.  She told me afterwards, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I had kind of low expectations, and you guys are hilarious.”  You know, I was a guy who kind of waited for the phone to ring because that’s what the life of an actor kind of just tends to be, and now what’s been so wonderful for me is becoming a creator, becoming a collaborator, and how it has really just changed my approach to work in general.  So, my wife is proud of me, and thankful to Steve for that.

What does your wife think, Steve?

STEVE:  My wife saw 7 Questions, and she loves that.   She’s seen some comedy bits that I have shown her on my phone, but she hasn’t seen a full comedy show yet.

Photo: JPI

Does Sheree like the comedic side of you?

STEVE:  Yeah, I don’t know if most people know that I may have a sense of humor because literally when we go to the shows, people are looking at me like I’m an alien like, “What the hell is going on up there?”

Right! It’s such a departure from what they envision as this image of you from your role on General Hospital to when they see you do something different. 

STEVE:  Right.  I’ve always kind of been kind of high-energy, and I don’t want to say funny, but I at least have a sense of humor and can crack jokes.  That was one of the first things that kind of connected my wife and me.

BRADFORD:  On stage, Steve’s a great storyteller, but what we’ve done over the last couple of years is really try to hone those stories in a specific way, like really make sure that the timing is there, that the setup is there, and all of that.  I think at the beginning, both of us were a little self-conscious about that because it was new to us.  I could sing a song and not be self-conscious about it because that’s what I did for most of my life.  This is new to us, and what I have loved seeing over the last couple of years, is Steve’s growth as a performer.

STEVE:  Thank you, buddy.

Photo: SBurtonInstagram

Question 5:  Do your kids understand what you do for a living? What do they think that you do?

STEVE:  My kids aren’t sure.  My daughter who is 16, she gets it.  My son, he hasn’t seen a lot of scenes from GH, but I showed him once he was able to understand some and he was like, “What do you do?”  I said, “I’m the Fonzie of daytime.”  He said, “Who’s Fonzie?”  (Laughs)  My 5-year-old really doesn’t know.  She thinks I go on the road more than I go to work.  She’s like, “Oh, are you doing your thing with Bradford?” She sees me working on my stuff with Bradford, and she’ll be like, “7 questions with Steve and Brad!”  She’ll walk around the house and say that.

Photo: BAndersonIG

BRADFORD:  My 8-year-old, Juna knows that I’m on TV.  There’s been a couple of times when we have been watching the news over the last couple of weeks, and the California governor will have press conferences, and it will then cut right into General Hospital, and there was one time that it just cut into me.  It’s been a long time since they’ve seen me on the television.  So that was cool.  There are a couple teachers at their school who are fans of the show, so that gives the kids a bit of a chuckle.  Juna will say to my 5-year-old, Finola, “Hey, Finola, come over here.  We’re going to be on dad’s podcast.”  So, anything technical, any video, she calls “a podcast”.  She doesn’t quite get that part of it.  She probably thinks YouTube, and everything is a podcast. (Laughs)

Photo: NBC

Question 6: If you guys could go on any late night TV talk show together, which show would it be and why?

STEVE:  My sensibility would be The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.

BRADFORD:  I would probably say Jimmy Fallon too, although I love Jimmy Kimmel because he’s on ABC.  Also, our sense of humor is pretty dumb, and Fallon’s sense of humor is pretty dumb.  So, I think our senses of humor match up with him better than anyone else, probably.

Photo: JPI

Question 7: On soaps, do you think more comedy should be injected into them?

STEVE:  Let me answer this, because when Bradford came on as Spinelli, he turned it into the comedy relief in a lot of ways.  We didn’t have a lot of comedy on the show.  Back in the day, you had some people like Steven Kay, who played Reginald, and you had people who had some comedic moments, but Bradford really kind of came in and was that.  People knew that once Spinelli was on the screen, something funny could happen.  Just with his encounter with somebody, or how he was going to try to approach me, or hug me, or how he was going to try to figure something out and spaz out, and people love that.  I think there needs to be comedy on a daytime drama.  There is so much heaviness all of the time usually, and that’s why I think Bradford (obviously he is a fantastic actor) is able to stay on for so long because he brought something new, something different to the table, and that’s what made him so valuable.

BRADFORD:  Thank you, Steve!  I think the best way for comedy to happen in daytime is through the organic instincts of each individual actor because the times where soaps try to be funny is where it doesn’t work sometimes.  That’s kind of a rule anywhere!  The best comedy is where it is found rather than planned.  So, when you look at someone like, for instance, Steve, when he moved the fuzzy balls the other day, that is the best kind of humor in our show because that is something that his character would do anyway, it showed a little bit of Steve’s personality, which I love, and it was just a little moment of levity.  You look at actors like Roger Howarth (Franco), Michelle Stafford (Phyllis, Y&R), or Maura West (Ava, GH), everyone that finds moments in their performance to do something that maybe wasn’t planned; it lets the audience breathe a bit.  That’s where I find that the best comedy is in soaps.

Photo: JPI

Bonus question 8! Surprise! Which comedians have influenced you … and which actors have influenced you the most?

STEVE:  Oh, I love Jim Gaffigan.  I love Sebastian Maniscalco.  There are a lot of guys out there.  Acting wise, I’m a huge fan of Tom Cruise, and I’ll tell you why.  From what I know the guy’s work ethic is like nobody else’s.  That’s what always inspires me.  I’m like, here’s a guy who has made 500 million dollars and still gives 120% to this day!  So, there’s a ton of actors that I could pick, but Tom Cruise delivers.  Every performance that guy has done has been amazing.

Courtesy/Amazon

BRADFORD:  For me, it didn’t occur to me until later, especially thinking about my comedic influences as a kid.  What I love about GH and the way that they film is that I really can use my whole body.  It’s not just a shoulder-up kind of show.  They have four cameras.  They can catch pretty much anything that you’re doing.  So, I realized that when I think about the way I use my body that I was influenced a lot by Don Knotts.  When you see something on his face (and granted his facial expressions were amazing and huge) you also saw it in his whole body.   Not only do I love Don Knotts, but I also love Donald O’Connor from Singin’ in the Rain.  Now as for an actor, I’ve always talked about Gary Oldman, because I love character actors who, if they weren’t playing a character and they were just themselves, you don’t know what that looks like. You only know them as the characters they play, because every character they play is different.  , If you look at Gary Oldman in The Professional, he is playing a villain there, but he’s this Russian guy with slicked back hair, and then, you see him play Commissioner Gordon in Batman with a flawless Chicago accent, and then, you hear him talk and you’re like, “Oh, he’s from England.  He’s a British actor.  I had no idea.”  That’s what I love.  His physicality, his voice, everything is built from the ground up when he plays a character.  A comic that I love to watch is John Mulaney.  Even though he’s like a preppy little guy that says crazy things, it’s very smart, and I just love his style.

In closing, here we are in the middle of this COVID-19 pandemic, what would you say to your fans, some of who, may feel lost, isolated, worried, etc?

BRADFORD:  I would say watch General Hospital!  At a time like this, routine is very important.  One of the great things about General Hospital is that it is part of peoples’ routines.  It’s not just a plug to watch our show, but it’s something that is comforting in that it is there.  Then, outside of that, you know, we try to provide not just entertainment but connection too.  That’s what we are there for.  We’ve been going live a lot on our Facebook page, on our YouTube page, and our reason for that is that we know people are available, and people can actually talk to us in real time, and as I said, we are trying to create moments of connection.

STEVE:  The best compliment that we get is, “We had so much fun.” or “Oh, you guys made my day.”  I try to answer all the You Tube comments we get, and many of them are similar right now like, “Man, I needed to laugh today.  Thank you for putting this up.”  Obviously, we are all dealing with something crazy right now with this pandemic, but just to give someone even 10 minutes on 7 Questions where they can laugh 3 or 4 times and then go back to whatever they were doing, that’s really what matters to us.

So, what do you think of Steve and Bradford’s new You  Tube show ‘7 Questions with Steve and Brad’?  Have you seen their live comedy club appearances, and if so, what did you think of it?  Do you enjoy seeing GH”s Jason and Spinelli in scenes and hijinks together in Port Charles? Comment below.