Eva LaRue Exits General Hospital As Natalia: ‘It Was Just An Awesome Experience’ (EXCL)

Soap Opera Digest can confirm that Eva LaRue has wrapped her run at General Hospital in the role of Natalia Ramirez, who on the June 30 episode ingested a dangerous cocktail of pills and alcohol in a state of despair over her impending fate of being shipped off to Belize by Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard). The actress, who made her debut on GH on February 26, 2024 and will air for the final time this week, spoke exclusively to Digest about her departure from the show.

Exit Signs

“I was originally only supposed to be on the show for a couple of months,” notes LaRue, who rose to soap fame as Maria Santos Grey on All My Children (1993-98; 2002-05; 2010; 2011). “And it ended up being a much longer run, which was great — and really fun because there are so many All My Children actors there and so it felt like home.”

The actress confides that she had a hunch several months ago that Natalia’s days in Port Charles were likely numbered. “I started to feel it in January,” she shares. “They tried to rehabilitate my character” — who was introduced as the disapproving and homophobic mother of Blaze, played by Jacqueline Grace Lopez, who was then romantically linked to Kristina Davis (Kate Mansi) — “and then all of a sudden, I have these scenes in January where, because Natalia had lied about her ex-husband [Sidwell] and broken his trust, Sonny was like, ‘We can’t be friends anymore.’ And I thought, ‘Uh-oh, there we go,’ because that [relationship with Sonny] was kind of my character’s only lifeline.”

The actress is pragmatic about the uphill battle the show faced swaying viewers to Natalia’s side — and accepting her in a love story with Sonny. “People just weren’t buying it, because they just hated my character so much,” she says. “I was so vilified that no matter what [the writers] did, it just wasn’t a solid enough rehabilitation that they were gonna buy me with Sonny. And so when they finally let that idea go, I realized, ‘Okay, I’m probably not much longer for this world.’ ”

LaRue understands how the show may have made some different choices in developing Natalia had she been conceived from the beginning as a long-term character. “I was supposed to just be kind of a conduit to the storyline and not really be there for very long, and they wrote me as, you know, this mom villain,” she observes. “And then it was really tough [to reverse that] when they were like, ‘Well, we’ve got her here, might as well keep her!’ Which was fine by me — I was happy to stick around. But it became a struggle to bring me back from the edge” and into the audience’s good graces.

Which, given her prior soap experience, was not always fun for LaRue. “It was hard for me, actually — for me as a person,” she muses. “Because in daytime, when you play a character like Maria Santos, love her or hate her, she was not ever meant to be a vilified character. And so it was hard from being that character, being a fan favorite, to being, like, literally hated. The GH fans couldn’t stand [Natalia]! So that was tough, because especially if you are accustomed to being rooted for, to be rooted against is not as comfortable.”

Men at Work

On her last day of filming, the actress recalls, “Frank [Valentini] called me upstairs and we had a really good exit chat.” She names getting to work alongside Valentini as one of the highlights of her months on the show. “It was really fun working for Frank,” LaRue enthuses. “He was lovely and we’ve been friends for a zillion years, going back to the New York days,” where she toiled on AMC and he served as the EP at One Life to Live. “And he and John [Callahan, ex-Edmund, AMC, her late ex-husband] were good friends.”

Her other favorite memories of working on GH relate to “seeing everybody every day, seeing Finola Hughes [Anna, who overlapped with LaRue when she played Anna on AMC] every day again, like when she was at All My Children, and Cam [Cameron Mathison, Drew, who played AMC’s Ryan] and Laura Wright — Laura used to be across the hall at Loving [where she played Ally]. When we were doing All My Children, I would see her all the time because she and Kelly Ripa [ex-Hayley] lived in the same building with John. I’ve always been friends with Nancy Lee Grahn [Alexis], and it was just great having that family, you know? Visiting that family every day was really great.”

She also gives a shout-out to her most frequent scene partner, Benard. “And of course, working with Maurice,” she nods. “What a rock star! That was a blast. I was so glad they put me with Maurice. That was really fun.”

As was sharing the stage with Carlo Rota, whose Jenz Sidwell was revealed to be Natalia’s ex-husband. “He’s so great,” she smiles. “I actually had hope for a minute there that even if it didn’t work out with Sonny, that they were going to somehow pair me and Carlo up to be villains together. I was like, ‘Maye they’ll just double down on the villain/villainess thing and have us be in cahoots!’ I thought that could be super-interesting. I thought, ‘Oh, this could be super-good because our stuff is so fiery and so fun. And it was fun having a son for a minute there, too,” in the form of Adrian Anchondo (Marco).

Fond Farewell

While LaRue was on the receiving end of some nasty online comments from GH viewers, “I found the vast majority of the General Hospital fans to be just so loyal to their show,” she praises. “They love, love, love their show and they may not like what your character’s doing, but the majority of the fans that would come on my page were really kind and they would just say, ‘We don’t like your character, we don’t like that she’s this horrible mom, but we like the story and we like the turmoil and the chaos and we like watching it all go down.’ So, they see it for what it is, which is this whole, big-picture storyline. I do think the majority of the General Hospital fans are really good fans because they see the whole picture, and they don’t have to love you to love what’s going on, because they know it all serves the story.”

In the end, LaRue beams, “I had a blast at General Hospital. I loved being there and I had a lot of really great scenes and I loved everybody that I got to work with. It was just an awesome experience, and I was really glad that I got to stay longer than I was supposed to.”

“Eva’s been a dear friend for years and I am so pleased we found an opportunity to work together!” said Executive Producer Frank Valentini in a statement. “What originally was meant as a guest star arc turned into a longer and more satisfying arc, in thanks to Eva’s terrific work and chemistry with our cast. I was thrilled Eva was available to us in this extended role. I wish her all the best in her upcoming projects.”