TV Guide Honors 1980’s Soap Hunks: Kin Shriner, Stephen Nichols, A. Martinez, Don Diamont, And More!

Soap fan tongues are wagging about a print picture of some major 80’s hunkage going viral online, and an Instagram video of the photo shoot that spawned it.

The picture coincides with a TV Guide Magazine issue that is dedicated to the 1980’s in conjunction with a cover story on hit sitcom, The Goldbergs. Part of that celebratory honoring of the 80’s is some men who are intimately tied to a major feature of the television of the era: the golden age of the soap opera.

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The photo and video are of Kin Shriner (General Hospital), Stephen Nichols ( Days of Our Lives), A Martinez (Santa Barbara, General Hospital, One Life to Live, The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of Our Lives), Doug Davidson (The Young and the Restless), Don Diamont ( The Young and the Restless; The Bold and the Beautiful), and Michael E. Knight (All My Children; The Young and the Restless), all of whom played leading men in daytime in the 1980’s and do now as well.

In the photo and at its shoot, the actors are all warm smiles and approachable body language, charming in their relaxed comfort with who they are and the characters they play. This contrasts with the 80’s alpha male characters they portrayed.  But times—and what it means to be a man—have changed.

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Michael E. Knight might be the best example of this. He played the infamous “Tad the Cad,” whom millions of women couldn’t get enough of on All My Children, despite, some would argue even partially because of, his open philandering and unabashed resistance to settling down. Well, he’s now the obviously erudite and openly nerdy Dr. Simon Neville. Knight’s “Tad the Cad” had that obvious self-satisfaction that womanizers do. But Dr. Neville wears his silver hair proudly, as he busies himself not with sleeping around, but dedicating his life to making the world better through his research, and slowly, even awkwardly, falling in love with fellow scientist, Ashley Abbot.

Whichever version of soap leading man you prefer, the buff, take-charge Testosterone Tarzan who raids boardrooms and relationships, or the sensitive type – it’s fascinating to see a photo and video of men who have inhabited both, in the 80’s and now.

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