Before He Was a Prestige TV Star, This Emmy Winner Was Developing a ‘Crazy Muscle' on One of Daytime's Most Iconic Sets
Daytime Emmy winner Tom Pelphrey, is currently starring in Task, now the actor is reflecting on his early daytime roots, including his breakout role on Guiding Light.
Pelphrey recently sat down with Dax Shepard on the Armchair Expert podcast, where the two discussed his career and journey in acting.
During the conversation, Pelphrey reflected on his early acting experience playing Jonathan Randall, the son of Reva Shayne (Kim Zimmer), on the CBS soap. He emphasized how different the filming pace was compared to other projects, explaining, "The soap itself is filming 50 to 60 pages a day."
He noted that the show produced an hour of television each day, a pace far faster than most productions, where filming just a few pages can be considered a productive day.
To keep up with the pace, most scenes were filmed in a single take. "Unless the light fell on your head, you're getting one take," he explained.
Pelphrey also described the production style, noting, "At least back then they had a proscenium style, 3 cameras, and they're live editing in the booth." He added that actors could see the red camera light out of the corner of their eyes, signaling when they were the focus of the scene.
Pelphrey described the experience as an invaluable training ground, adding, "I'd never been in front of a camera before."
Discussing the workload, he said, "You're doing 20 pages a day," describing memorization as a "total muscle" he had to develop. "When I first got there, it took me 2 weeks to learn 10 pages," he added.
Pelphrey also recalled Guiding Light's special ‘In the Light' episodes, which focused on a single character and storyline. "We would do these character episodes where our character would be in the entire episode," he said.
When it came time for his episode, he said production asked if he wanted to film it in a single day. "I said, ‘yes,' and I did it," he recalled, adding that memorization is "a crazy muscle, but you can, you can exercise it."
For his work on Guiding Light, Pelphrey earned two Daytime Emmy awards for Outstanding Younger Actor in a Drama Series, first in 2006 then again in 2008.
Season 1 of Task is currently streaming, with a second season reportedly in preproduction.
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This story was originally published April 21, 2026 at 2:07 PM.