Exclusive: Brookyln Rae Silzer On GENERAL HOSPITAL Return

Brooklyn Rae Silzer was thrilled when GH reached out to her about popping in to Port Charles as Emma. “My mom told me I was jumping for joy,” reports the actress, who first appeared on the show in 2011. “I was so excited to be back and see everyone! I was there for two days, and I was o glad I got to spend a little extra time with some of my favorite people, like [on-screen grandparents] Finola [Hughes, Anna] and Tristan [Rogers, Robert].”

She had just as warm a reunion with Hughes and Rogers as Emma did with Anna and Robert. “Obviously, I grew up with them, and they taught me so much when I was little,” Silzer says. “So it’s so fun to see them when I’m all grown up. It’s just great to catch up with everyone — I got to see Maurice [Benard, Sonny] and talk with Frank [Valentini, executive producer]. I miss him so much! It’s just a great environment and so fun to be back and I’m so blessed that they brought me back to come visit.”

Silzer has made periodic visits since Emma moved to Berkeley with her parents, Robin and Patrick, back in 2016, but says her GH colleagues are still startled when they see her in person. “Every time I’m there, everyone just, like, stops and stares at me and they’re like, ‘What?! How are you so big?’ ” she chuckles. “It’s kind of funny because it happens every time. I mean, there are pretty big gaps in between when I visit, so everyone thinks I get bigger each time.” (For the record, she says, “I’m only 5’4″ — not crazy tall!”)

Sight For Sore Eyes: Robert (Tristan Rogers) and Anna (Finola Hughes) were thrilled to spend Thanksgiving with Emma.

 

The actress easily slipped back into old memorization habits. “I started to read [the scripts] on my own pretty young,” she notes. “But when I was younger, my mom helped me a lot more, reading it with her and practicing with her. Now that I’m older, I pretty much practice by myself, and then maybe I’ll read it once with my mom, but normally I just try to process it in my own head and I try to make my own choices. And then when I got [to the studio], I read the scenes with Finola and Tristan.”

Studying dialogue is not so different from her life outside of GH as a diligent student. “I’m pretty busy with school,” she shares. “I’ve been applying for nursing school. That takes up most of my time. I’m taking pretty hard classes this year, but I’m hoping to stay local for college,  maybe I can come visit GENERAL HOSPITAL more often. That would be really cool.” Her desire to pursue a medical career “is definitely inspired by GENERAL HOSPITAL, because ever since I started, I’ve known I wanted to be a nurse, I think since I was six years old. I always said, ‘I want to be a nurse when I grow up,’ and it just stayed with me, and I’ve become more inspired as I’ve been doing volunteer work throughout my high school years.”

She wasn’t particularly nervous about being back in front of the cameras. “I was more excited than nervous because it’s a place I’m so familiar with and it’s such a safe place for me,” she muses. “I’ve only had positive experiences there and obviously I’m a little nervous because I want to show [my colleagues] that I could still [do well] on the show and I don’t want to let anyone down. But I know that they’ll be supportive; everyone there is so supportive and nice and they all encourage me and help me along and give me advice when we’re running scenes on the side. They’re so helpful, it makes it not a very anxious environment.”

Silzer was excited to find out how Emma has changed since her last visit. “I had really fun scenes and they kind of brought out a different side of Emma,” she notes. “I’m kind of more mature [as Emma] and they made me really smart, actually. It was cool to play a smarter character and to [find out] she’s working in a lab, since that’s something I obviously want to do in real life. It was just cool to see how they’re developing Emma’s character. She’s not that different, but she has evolved from when she was little.”