Hopped from: GUIDING LIGHT (Annie, 1994-98) to Y&R (Kelly, 2013-14) to GH (2019-present)
When I joined GL, my view of soaps was … “amazing! I watched them. I loved GUIDING LIGHT, loved soaps.”
By the time I got to GH, my view of soaps was … “a feeling of home.”
When I joined GL, I got the warmest welcome from … “Robert Newman [ex-Josh; Ashland, Y&R]. I was over the moon about that because I had watched him as a fan.”
When I joined Y&R, I got the warmest welcome from … “Billy Miller [ex-Billy].”
When I joined GH, I got the warmest welcome from … “James Patrick Stuart [Valentin]. Before I started, he sent me flowers with a note that said something like, ‘We love you already.’ I took over Michelle’s [Stafford, ex-Nina; Phyllis, Y&R] dressing room, and you know how when you hang up pictures and stuff you leave little holes in the wall? He came in and, like, spackled my dressing room for me. How sweet is that? Either that or he has a lot of free time [laughs].”
The co-star who I consider my most influential mentor is … “Kim Zimmer [ex-Reva, GL]. She was a pro. I was schooled in theater and coming from this theater school into daytime, and she knew how to work the camera and she taught me how to work with the company. She was loving, and an amazing person, but she was also tough. She was my biggest teacher on that show, definitely.”
The past co-star I recently caught up with is … “Kim. I played pickleball with her, A.C. [Weary, Zimmer’s husband] and Laura [Wright, Carly; ex-Cassie, GL]. They are very good!”
On GL, I had the most fun working with … “Kim. Sorry to be redundant! We were just at each other all the time, and we had to find different ways of playing it, finding the humor of it.”
On Y&R, I had the most fun working with … “I loved working with Billy.”
When I picture the GL studio, the set that first comes to mind is … “the ballroom where we had a nurses’ ball — not the Nurses’ Ball on GENERAL HOSPITAL, but I remember I was wearing this gray dress, I was still recurring there, and there was some sort of awards [ceremony] in a beautiful ballroom, and that was the first time my character and Josh really started connecting. It had this big staircase, I remember — it was all very memorable to me, the dress, the set.”
When I picture the Y&R studio, the set that first comes to mind is … “I just love where YOUNG AND RESTLESS shoots, and I was always in some sort of living room with Billy. I guess it’s where I lived, but I’m sort of cloudy on that [laughs].”
I would describe my dressing room at GL as … “amazing! First I had this room that was on the main floor and I loved it. I don’t know how this happened, but then I was moved to a dressing room that was down a level. There were very few dressing rooms down there. It was me and Ron Raines [ex-Alan]; I had one and he had one and they were both kind of big and newish and I just loved it. It was probably bigger than my apartment at the time!”
I would describe my dressing room at Y&R as … “really nice. If I remember correctly, they had bathrooms in theirs, so it was pretty great! I remember thinking, ‘I wonder, if you didn’t have a place to live, if you could just live in your dressing room here,’ because you had everything that you needed. That was the first time I’d ever had a dressing room with a bathroom!”
Of all my soap weddings, the most memorable one is … “I’d have to say Annie and Josh at the carousel. I think I had the biggest hair I’ve ever had!”
Of all the stories I’ve played on a soap, the most outlandish was … “Oh, boy, it could be so many! But I think when Annie was carrying the baby that she knew had already passed and she made it look like Reva pushed her down the stairs when really I pushed myself backward down the stairs.”
My greatest on-screen rivalry was … “a tie: Annie and Reva, and now, Nina and Carly.”
The co-star from a past show I would most love to reconnect with is … “You know who did the sweetest thing for me? I don’t think she knows that this is in my mind always, always, but when I left GUIDING LIGHT, there wasn’t a lot of hoopla about it. In my young mind, I never thought I was well-liked on that show; when you’re younger, you just think, ‘I don’t think people like me.’ And one of my last days there, there were flowers in my dressing room. This person I’m going to say [they were from], we never talked a whole lot, but I always loved the way she was in real life; she was never gossipy and she was such a class act. It was Maeve Kinkead [ex-Vanessa]. There was a card that said, ‘You are amazing and you will be missed and I hope nothing but great things for you.’ It brings me to tears now because it was such a classy thing to do, especially for somebody thinking, ‘Nobody likes me, nobody’s going to miss me.’ I would love to sit with her and tell her how much that meant to me.”
