Some very familiar faces to soap opera fans scored big on Wednesday, July 8 when nominations were announced today for the upcoming 78th annual Primetime Emmy Awards.

Two-time Daytime Emmy winner, Tom Pelphrey (ex-Jonathan Randall, Guiding Light, ex-Mick Cain, As the World Turns) scored for his critically-acclaimed role as Robbie Prendergrast HBO’s Task in the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series category.

Pelphrey was nominated alongside: Patrick Ball, The Pitt, Billy Crudup, The Morning Show, Shawn Hatosy, The Pitt, Geran Howell,The Pitt, Jack Lowden, Slow Horses and Carlos-Manuel Vesga, Pluribus.

Photo: NBC

Daytime Emmy winner, Jeff Kober (ex-Cyrus Renault, General Hospital) received his Emmy back in 2022 in the Outstanding Supporting Actor category. Now, Kober has received his first-ever Primetime Emmy nomination in his four decade career.

Kober guest starred on HBO Max’s The Pitt and submitted himself for the Emmy competition and had to campaign without the support of the network brass. His nominated performance is that of Duke Ekins, Dr. Robby’s zen biker pal with a worrisome growth in his chest.

The longtime actor told Variety on his decision to enter the primetime Emmy game on his own, “I just felt like I wanted this to be seen, regardless of the consequences or the outcome. “I felt like it was strong work, and I wanted it to be seen/ One of the great things about being an actor is the constant work of bringing the definition of yourself inside rather than needing to find it outside. When you don’t need approval, you’ve got your own back.”

Kolber is joined in the category by Coleman Domingo, Euphoria, Ernest Harden Jr., The Pitt, Jeff Hiller, Pluribus, Jonathan Pryce, Slow Horses and Bradley Whitford, The Diplomat.

Brittany Allen, who won a Daytime Emmy for her role as Marissa Tasker on All My Children back in 2010 in the Outstanding Younger Actress Category, also scored a Primetime Emmy nomination for her role in The Pitt. Allen has been recognized in the Guest Actress in a Drama Series category for her turn as Roxy, a terminal cancer patient.

Like Kober, Allen was informed by HBO Max she wouldn’t be part of the network’s official Emmy submissions, so she and her team self-submitted her for Emmy contention and she now has  a nomination!

Allen is joined in her Emmy category with: Tal Anderson, The Pitt, Tina Ivlev, The Pitt, Miriam Shor, Pluribus, Merritt Wever, The Gilded Age, and Shailene Woodley, Paradise.

The 78th Primetime Emmy Awards will be handed out live on NBC and streaming on Peacock at 8pm ET/5pm PT and emanating from the Peacock Theatre in Los Angeles on September 14.  For the complete list of nominations click here.

Glad to hear that soap alums, Tom Pelphrey, Jeff Kober and Brittany Allen all nabbed well-deserved Primetime Emmy nominations? Weigh-in via the comment section below.

Guiding Light alum, Matt Bomer (ex-Be Reade) was honored with the Vanguard Award at the 43rd Miami Film Festival just a few weeks ago. The award recognized his body of work, his significant impact on film and television and his current roles including on Apple TV+’s movie, Outcome, which also features All My Children legend, Susan Lucci (ex-Erica Kane).

While at the festival, Bomer participated in a live sit-down conversation with Josh Horowitz of the Happy Sad Confused Podcast where he was asked about his early days in television and soap operas, all leading to Horowitz asking Matt to give a 1 minute recap of the life and times of Guiding Light’s Ben Reade!

Bomer played the role of the scheming Ben from 2001-2003, and as discussed, it was never Matt’s intent to land on a soap or stay for any significant length of time, as he has other aspirations as an actor after graduating from the acclaimed Carnegie-Mellon University in Drama.

Photo: AppleTV+

THE ROAD TO GUIDING LIGHT

Speaking with Horowitz, he explained how he came to Guiding Light, “I’d done two episodes on All My Children with Susan Lucci, who’s in Outcome, who I got to just come full circle with. Susan had spoken at Carnegie Mellon and three months later I was on set with her. (On All My Children) I was playing her daughter’s ex lesbian lover’s, new fiancé.”

After that, Bomer was asked to audition for a role on Guiding light, and the rest is soap history. When Horowitz asked Matt to give the lowdown of everything that happened to Ben Reade in story in one minute, here’s what Matt shared!

Bomer began, “He’s a trust fund baby who bet his fraternity brothers that he could be the first to deflower the town virgin, who is like the young female heroine on the show. Then, of course, he falls in love with her, but then she finds out about his attempt to deflower her, so she dumps him. Then, he falls in love with this other girl, but then he loses his trust fund. So, he turns to the only life that one can, which is to become a male sex worker. All of my clients were like women in their forties. I was like 22. I would meet them (on set) at 6:00 AM and do intimacy scenes by 9:00 am. Then, he goes crazy because his girlfriend finds out that he was being a sex worker, and so she dumps him. He goes crazy, kills four people, then kidnaps her to a remote cabin in the woods where he holds her hostage with a syringe full of insulin. Then, when he gets busted, he injects himself with it, but then hangs on one extra day in the hospital to apologize for all his sins.”

Photo: CBS

On his way out Bomer shared, “I told the (GL) writers that when I got there, ‘Look, I’m not not going be here that long. So give me the craziest thing you’ve ever given anybody,’ and they obliged. But my favorite thing was after all that, I remember I was like in my dying makeup, walking off the soundstage and a writer comes up to me and goes, ‘If you ever want to come back, we’ve got it figured out.'”

SUPERMAN

After Guiding Light, Bomer found himself not only in the running for the next Superman movie but to play the lead role, and landing the part. But, as Matt revealed, the movie was scrapped and he never got the chance to play the man of steel.

“I was such an unknown at the time,” recounted Bomer. “I went in on a cattle call, then I got a phone call from the casting people. Then, I went and met with a director and read with an actress. Then, I went back in and screen tested in the Superman suit and signed the contract. I know that I was the director’s choice for the role and then. … it happens, (the movie got canned). It was a great script. It was called Fly By and it was more about Clark Kent when he was younger. He was like a college student trying to figure what it is to have all these powers and how to try to be a normal person and Superman at the same time.  It was all so surreal to be going from a total cattle call to that.”

You can check out the full conversation with Bomer below.

Do you remember Matt’s time as Ben Reade on Guiding Light? How do you think he did when in 1 minute he told the life and times of Ben? Let us know via the comment section below.

Throughout its 57-year run on daytime, Guiding Light introduced television audiences to many actor who would go on to have major careers in motion pictures, primetime television and the stage. One such is the incredible Tom Pelphrey (Task, Mank, Ozark, Outer Range, et al.), who from the minute he debuted on the CBS soap took soap viewers by storm for his raw, relatable and emotional turn as Reva (Kim Zimmer) and Prince Richard Winslow’s (Bradley Cole) son, Jonathan Randall.

In the complicated storyline, Jonathan was conceived and born while Reva was suffering from amnesia and believing herself to be Princess Catherine while living in San Cristobel. As Jonathan grew up his life was torn apart making him a vengeful, menacing young man, who under it all was deeply wounded and who felt abandoned and forgot about.

Kim Zimmer won four Daytime Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Reva Shayne, while Tom Pelphrey took home two Daytime Emmys for the Outstanding Younger Actor in a Daytime Drama Series for his performance. On-screen, together, they were a riveting pairing which included many a tense scene including when Jonathan choked out Reva.

Photo: JPI

During last week’s Guiding Light reunion livestream with Zimmer, Bradley Cole (ex-Richard and Jeffrey, GL) and Laura Wright (ex-Cassie, GL, now Carly, GH) on the You Tube’s Michael Fairman Channel, the three actors reminisced about their time together as romantic pairings: Reva/Richard, Cassie/Richard, Reva/Jeffrey etc, but also talked about many of their co-stars and their deeply personal feelings of what Guiding Light meant to all of them.

REVA AND JONATHAN WERE SOAP OPERA GOLD

Though the years, it’s been no secret that Zimmer, did not initially want Tom Pelphrey cast as her son, because as she admitted, in the audition process with her, she was scared of him based on the power of his performance in the scene.

Kim recalled, “I went in (to the producers) right after I auditioned like seven guys, and I said, ‘Hire any of them, but the last guy.’ And they all looked at me like I had six heads, because they had already decided they were going to cast him. And then when I said that, they were like, ‘we’re definitely going to cast him now! That’s the feeling they wanted. They knew he scared me.”

The beloved GL heroine said that once she began working in a scene with Pelphrey, all was A-OK! “It was almost immediate once we started really working together, and I could trust the story,” shared Kim. “It was such a bizarre story that I was being given, again (also referencing Reva’s Clone story as the other), that I was hesitant about that. But once we started really working together, there was no question that they had made the right decision.”

In fact, fans loved Reva and Jonathan so much, they would vote them top couple as Kim remembers, “And, you know, in the soap magazines, we got voted, ‘Best couple,’ and we weren’t a love couple. We were a mother and son. That was like the biggest compliment to me –  we’d get nominated as ‘Outstanding Couple.’

ONE OF THE FINEST ACTORS IN THE HISTORY OF GUIDING LIGHT

Kim’s real-life son, Jake Weary has also made quite the name for himself in TV and motion pictures and Pelphrey also bonded many years ago: “When my son was living in LA, he and Jake would hang out together. They had mutual friends and they got to know each other pretty well, which I love. Jake actually asked me recently if I had any favorite Guiding Light scenes that I could remember. And I said, ‘Anything with HB (Larry Gates), Billy Lewis (Jordan Clarke) and Tom Pelphrey.

During the livestream, Laura Wright, who worked in many scenes with Pelphrey, added, “In my opinion, Tom took the bar and he raised it. Not just in talent because he had that, but Tom inspired you. He made you want to do like that, and he wanted you to be as great. He just was all around a great guy to work with.”

In case you missed it,  you can check out the Guiding Light live reunion with Kim, Bradley and Laura, followed by some incredible scenes between Tom and Kim as Jonathan and Reva.

Then, let us know, do you think Reva and Jonathan as played by Kim Zimmer and Tom Pelphrey, were the most dynamic mother/son duo all-time on the soaps? Weigh-in via the comment section below.