Exclusive: Alexa Havins’s (Lulu) GH Gig Is A Family Affair For Her And Hubby Justin Bruening
Alexa Havins made her General Hospital debut late last year as Lulu Spencer, coming out of acting retirement to assume the role of Laura and Luke’s daughter. In recent years, she has been focused on raising the four children (three daughters and a son, ranging in age from 4 to 14) that she shares with her husband, actor Justin Bruening. The lovebirds met on All My Children, where she played Babe and Bruening played Jamie. He proposed to her on the set on December 21, 2004 (click here for an exclusive interview with the pair detailing their adorable engagement story), and they tied the knot on June 5, 2005.
Reporting For Duty
Stepping away from life in front of the camera, she says, “just came naturally. It happened gradually on its own; it wasn’t like a hard, cold, ‘No. Stop.’ It was just, ‘This seems like the right thing to do.’ I had a hard time being away from the kids. I remember filming out of state, just crying in my pillow, like, ‘This does not make sense, being away from my kids.’ And Justin was working more and we wanted to keep the family together and travel with him.”
Which is not to say that putting her own career on the back burner was entirely easy for Havins. “Sometimes it did feel like, ‘Is this the right thing to do?’ ” she admits. “You think it is, but looking back, God’s ways are better than mine. Was it hard walking away? There’s a sense of pride in what you do [for a living], you know? My identity was wrapped up in being an actor, and to strip that away and put on the role of just being wife and mom, that was a change for me. But in hindsight, it was wonderful, and the children are much better for it, and our marriage is strong because of it — which is no small feat in our business, because you’re never together! That’s the hard part; you just aren’t together [when someone is away working on a project], and that was our priority. We have a maximum amount of time we’re willing to be apart.”
Bruening was always supportive of Havins going back to work if she so chose, and since she’s begun filming at GH, he has done everything in his power to support her. Havins grins, “He’s my child care, he’s our substitute teacher because we home school, and he’s my professional line reader. I print out a huge stack [of script pages] and slam it down in front of him and I say, ‘All right, let’s do this! Let’s run these lines!”
Chimes in Bruening, “I know, like, every character on General Hospital at this point, I just want you to know!” His favorite character to “play,” he says, “is Valentin,” James Patrick Stuart’s character. “I like Valentin. I like the bad guys, because they’re the most fun. And then I like the Cody character, Josh [Kelly, Cody] is funny! He’s more my humor in real life. He’s easy to do.” Havins adds, “I think he makes a beautiful Tracy.” Bruening replies, “I think so, too, 100 percent,” joking that when he rehearses with his wife, he strives to “reach that deep emotional level that Tracy has.”
Because Bruening was such an integral part of her prior daytime run, Havins says, “The weird thing is not having him there [on the GH set] because we had, like, 24 hours a day together on All My Children. I said to him, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if all of a sudden you pop up in the back as an extra, and then you pop up in another one of my scenes, and then all of a sudden, it’s like, ‘Where’s Justin?’ It would be like Take Your Husband To Work Day! It does feel very strange going to work without him, I must say.”
Havins most missed Bruening’s presence on set on the day she first got to see Michael E. Knight, who plays Lulu’s uncle Martin; on AMC, he played Tad Martin, the father of Bruening’s character. Havins and Knight encountered one another behind the scenes prior to their first scenes together. “We had such a wonderful reunion in the hallway,” she reports. “It was just love. Oh, he’s the best. You just don’t skip a beat with somebody like Michael. Right away it was, ‘I love you!’ and into a hug. He and Justin were so close on All My Children and there’s just a love there that doesn’t stop. There’s just a pause button and then you pick right back up.”
Make New Friends But Keep The Old: Havins on the GH set with longtime pal Michael E. Knight (Martin) and new co-star Jane Elliot (Tracy).
Conversation
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