Spider-Man star James Franco realized his two-month stint on General Hospital was going to be a challenge when soap opera bosses asked if he'd need an autocue to feed him his lines.
The actor surprised daytime TV devotees after signing up to star as a mysterious new character on the long-running drama last month (Oct09), but the actor admits he was the one in for a shock when he was handed a hefty 65-page script to memorise for just a single day's filming.
He explains, "It's been a blast so far. It was kind of mind-blowing. I've worked one day on it. It's one day of a few. But I think we packed seven episodes of my material in. They gave me a script for the day that was as thick as a film script and that's what we planned to shoot in a single day. No ad-libbing.
"If I needed it, they said they had a teleprompter, but the regulars didn't use it so I didn't want to use it, either. Anyway, I'm pretty good at remembering lines."
And the 31 year old insists he's still coming to grips with the series' fast-paced shooting schedule.
He adds, "One big difference (between soaps and films) is that you do one take. They're going for one take because they have about four cameras for each set-up. It's one take - you do the whole scene and then you're onto the next. That's three or four pages in a moment."
Franco's first episode of General Hospital is set to air on 20 November (09).