Soap veteran Lisa LoCicero takes a few moments to reflect on how playing Olivia on GENERAL HOSPITAL is more fun — and much more work — than some of her previous characters, and how she would like to see Liv let off some steam.
Soap Opera Weekly: How does GENERAL HOSPITAL differ from your previous soap experiences?
Lisa LoCicero: When I was on LOVING and THE CITY [where she played Jocelyn Brown], even the front-burner storylines didn’t have quite so many words to say. It’s definitely a jump in workload, but it’s been fine, because the writing has been so much fun to play. What [head writer Robert Guza Jr.] and his team have been writing for this character has really been more in my wheelhouse than [Sonia Santi] on ONE LIFE TO LIVE. That was a wonderful character that they wrote; [but] that whole storyline, as we’ve all joked, never quite took off with the fans. It was never anyone’s favorite tale. I did have fun playing Sonia, but this character, Olivia — they’ve really written something that’s fun for any actor to play. I feel sort of honored that they wrote this for me. 
Weekly: Do you feel a little trepidation, though, because the fans are so protective of Sonny?
LoCicero: They get upset about someone getting in his face, [and] she definitely gets in his face. Olivia is not afraid of Sonny. She doesn’t have that insider’s over-arching respect for him or fear of what he does. She sees him as a grown-up version of the kid she knew on the playground, beating the crap out of people. So she doesn’t have this holy terror of him that other people seem to. [The question is,] are fans willing to accept someone getting in Sonny’s face and not kowtowing to him in any way?
Weekly: Olivia doesn’t back down from any of he female characters, either. Could you see a catfight in Olivia’s future?
LoCicero: That would be fun. I hope they write that down the road: a good old-fashioned catfight — a real one, not just [DYNASTY’s] Alexis slapping Krystle in the fish pond. A real brawl would be fun.
Weekly: Have you done any stage fighting before?
LoCicero: I’ve done some of it in episodic stuff. I’m not a martial artist or anything. On WITHOUT A TRACE I had to slap this child; when my son saw it on TV he was horrified (laughs)!
