The reveal that Heather Webber is Esme’s biological mother via her torrid, long-ago affair with notorious serial killer Ryan Chamberlain got GH fans talking — both about the twist and about Alley Mills’s (Heather) commandingly creepy performance.
“I am having so much fun,” declares Mills, who took over the role of Heather last October. “I just am! I mean, I honestly feel like a kid. It’s very strange [laughs]. You know, every once in a while somebody writes something and you just go, ‘Whoa!’ You know? It just hits you somewhere. I love her; I love Heather. I just think she could do anything, anything she wants! There’s a freedom to her.”
Mills was fascinated to learn more about Heather’s backstory with Ryan. “The stuff with Ryan is very dark,” she notes. “They had a really weird relationship years ago, and what resulted from that is Esme. It’s clear that there was pain involved in their weird relationship. But what I imagine is that with all their sort of dark wounds, they were very attracted to each other. He was already a serial killer and we know that she had a very troubled past. I’ve made up stuff in my mind about her relationship with her father that was not good, and that sort of justifies her vengeance track, that she just wants to get even with everybody that’s mean. And she thinks she should! And everybody else who’s watching this would probably love to get even, too, but we’re not allowed to! For Heather, [revenge is] like therapy.”
Filming the reveal scenes was a memorable experience for the actress, in no small part because it marked the first time Ryan spoke in Heather’s presence, and portrayer Jon Lindstrom had to share some of the dialogue burden with Mills. “For, like, the first eight pages of the scenes, he didn’t talk,” she points out. “I was like, ‘Really?! You’re not gonna talk? You’re gonna make me walk around your wheelchair and do all the talking for three scenes?’ It was a really long monologue that I had. I locked myself in my house for, like, five days to learn that thing! And then, when we got to it, because of the timing that day, our sweet director said, ‘You know, we just have to go right away.’ So, we blocked it and then shot it. I didn’t even have time to think about the blocking she’d just given me around the wheelchair for eight pages, you know, talking about howling with the wolves and all of that [laughs]! So I didn’t have any idea how that scene came out. It was just like a big blur to me. But that’s how it goes at GENERAL HOSPITAL! You’re just shot out of the cannon.”
Now that Ryan and Heather have laid their Esme-related cards on the table, it is presumably only a matter of time before Heather will get to meet her darling daughter — and Mills is greatly looking forward to sharing the stage with Esme’s portrayer, Avery Pohl. “I just met Avery, finally, at the studio, and I’m in love with her,” Mills declares. “She is just an amazing child. She is so talented. I’ve been watching her on screen, oh, my goodness, she is so good. And she’s a great little seductress, too! So the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree!”
