Rick Hearst, Young and Restless’s Former Matt Clark, Responds To Roger Howarth Recast
Last month, Young and Restless resurrected one of its most notorious bad guys, Matt Clark, now played by daytime vet Roger Howarth (ex-Todd, One Life to Live; ex-Franco, General Hospital et al). The character had been absent from the screens — and from the lives of his favorite targets for torture, Sharon (Sharon Case) and Nick (Joshua Morrow) — for 24 years, having taken what appeared to be his last breath in 2001. Back then, he was played by Rick Hearst, now Ric Lansing on GH, who tells Soap Opera Digest that he was just as shocked as fans were to discover that Matt was getting a new lease on life.
Life Goes On
Matt’s dramatic demise certainly did appear to be definitive, as the villain notoriously yanked out his own breathing tube and placed it in a stunned Nick’s hands to frame Nick for his “murder,” so it makes sense that Hearst did not expect Matt ever to get the “back from the dead” treatment. “We all know that dead is never dead on soaps,” the actor chuckles, “but that guy was dead! It was just short of, like, [15th-century Scottish knight] William Wallace being torn to pieces and different pieces of him being put on different spikes on London Bridge and whatnot. That’s how dead he was!”
Hearst learned that Howarth, his former GH castmate, had been hired by Y&R when the news first broke back in August, which came hot on the heels of the show’s announcement that Tamara Braun was joining the cast as Sienna Bacall. He had touched base with Braun, who he had worked with when she played Carly on GH early in his own Port Charles career, to congratulate her on her new gig (“Tamara and I are very close; we’re very good friends and keep up with one another”), but at the time, he didn’t realize that Sienna was connected to Matt Clark (she’s married to the guy, who has been going by the name Mitch Bacall). “When I first found out about Roger, I had no idea what his role was,” Hearst explains. “And then a fan sent me a video or something that had superimposed images on it. I saw Roger on one side and Sharon on the other side and it said something like, ‘Matt Clark is back!’ And I went, ‘What?!?!’”
Once the shock wore off, Hearst saw the vision. “I think it’s a brilliant choice,” he declares of the casting. “He’s a great actor. If they were going to pick anybody to play this role and be able to do something really extraordinary with it, I would say Roger would absolutely be the right person.”
