Catching Up With…GH’s Marisa Ramirez
GH’s Marisa Ramirez’s takes on the polar opposite of her soap character, the rebellious Gia Campbell, in her new movie, All Souls Day, currently in production.
Ramirez plays “a very intelligent college student,” she explains. “Cultured, put-together, a lot of common sense. I speak five languages. I’m trained with guns.”
That gun knowledge comes in handy when things take an unexpected turn. “My boyfriend and I are traveling down to Mexico to visit my parents [in the film], and we wind up getting stuck in an old Mexican town during their celebration for the Day of the Dead. And it turns out to not be the right time to get stuck in that town,” sets up Ramirez. “It’s definitely a horror film. We have special effects with zombies and undead. It’s freaky.”
Despite the subject matter, Ramirez asserts that the filming experience has been anything but frightening. “It’s been so quick, so easy. Everybody on the set is easy-going and great to work with. It hasn’t felt like work. It’s been more like a hang-out session. It’s been so much fun and it’s better than anything I could have expected from it,” she Ramirez.
Ramirez’s personal life, including her two-year marriage to actor/model Nathan Lavezoli is equally rewarding. “It hasn’t changed my life; it’s made it so much more fulfilling for me to have someone here who is my soulmate and he’s so supportive of me and it’s amazing. I’m excited to spend the rest of my life with him,” she grins.
Also exciting was Ramirez’s jump to the short-lived prime-time series Miracles, which she began filming while still appearing on GH. Unfortunately, the show struggled to find an audience. “When it first started to air, we kept getting pre-empted [for news coverage] and so it didn’t have a good start,” she explains. “It was publicized well and people knew about it, but it wasn’t on when it said it was going to be on. It was frustrating, but I wasn’t completely heartbroken. It’s the nature of the business and you never know what’s going to happen.”
Also frustrating was GH’s decision to recast Gia despite Ramirez’s offers to find an alternate solution. “I wanted to try to compromise, maybe have the character go away for a while [and] come back when Miracles was done shooting and finish out the character,” she sighs. “But it was difficult for me to to be there one day in my wardrobe and the next day the new girl steps in and is wearing my clothes and is my character.”
As for a return to GH or another soap, “I don’t know,” muses Ramirez. “I feel there’s so much I want to do as far as prime time and film and when you’re on daytime, you’re locked down into your character and your contract. If it got to the point where I wanted to have a steady job, if I had a baby that I had to support, that would definitely be something I’d want to do, but right now I’m seeing what happens and trying new stuff.”
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