General Hospital Exclusive: Alexa Havins On Lulu’s Reunions With Dante And Rocco
Manic Monday: Lulu (Alexa Havins) laid eyes on both Rocco (Finn Carr, l.) and Dante (Dominic Zamprogna) on the Monday, December 2 episode of GH.
After emerging from her coma and liver transplant remarkably spry in that “only in daytime” kind of way, Lulu Spencer has officially reunited with two of the most important people in her life: her son, Rocco, and her ex-husband, Dante.
Men Of The Hour
As Alexa Havins settled into her new gig playing Lulu, she tried to bring realism to Lulu slowly realizing that nearly four years have passed since she was last conscious. “I see it almost like Lulu is a woman out of town, like a person from the past that’s been transported,” notes the actress. “Everything is different. She’s completely overwhelmed. There’s so much to process with no time to process it. It’s almost like jumping on a moving train when you’re still trying to figure out where the train was at the last station. There’s just so much that has happened in Port Charles the last four years. There was that really good beat of her showing up at her house and it’s not even her house anymore, and that was like, ‘Wait. What is happening?’ That was her first clue [to the passage of time], and that was an interesting journey, seeing her [try to process] each puzzle piece, going, ‘Okay, something’s not right. But brush it off.’ ” That is, “until it leads her to Rocco. That, to me, is like when the earth shatters. Those were such important scenes.”
The actress appreciates the way the show’s writers unfolded Lulu’s dawning realization. “I thought it was really well-written,” she praises. “The way they wrote it was really smart because the audience knows [how much time has gone by], but Lulu is brushing it all off at first because she’s in such a frantic mode of getting away from Cyrus and just trying to get home.” And then, after things at her former residence are not as she expected, Lulu made a beeline for the Quartermaine mansion. “It’s like, ‘Well, where am I going to go next? I’m going to go to Tracy because that’s my rock! She’s no-nonsense. She’s going to tell me what’s up.’ ”
It was at the mansion that Lulu encountered her suddenly much taller and more mature son. To play the emotional moment, Havins drew on her own real-life experience as a mother of four children, noting that “as a mom, it was so important to me” to get the scenes right. “Perhaps things have moved on in four years with Dante, or with her mother, but they are adults. There is something tangible there and visual there that shows the time jump. Justin [Bruening, her real-life husband] and I have an 11-year-old son. I hugged him before I went to work and just before I went and shot those scenes, I was staring at [a picture of her son] going, ‘This is what she saw [before she went into her coma], this sweet, innocent, 11-year-old boy.’ I kept looking at it because that’s what Lulu would have seen in Rocco, a child of that age — and then all of a sudden, here is this child of yours that is no longer a child, right in front of you! Just the soul-crushing, soul-shattering moment of, ‘I missed that time.’ ”
Having a young actor as talented as Finn Carr (Rocco) to work opposite only made the scenes more emotional. “Finn is fantastic,” Havins raves. “He is so amazing and I think the scenes played beautifully because he has such an earnestness and an innocence that he brings to his portrayal of Rocco, which was just so endearing, but then to play it from my perspective, as a mother losing those years with her son…. She just can’t even begin to process the level of overwhelmed that she is! Those were really intense scenes. But he was wonderful in them.”
In the same episode, Havins shared her first scenes opposite Dominic Zamprogna (Dante). “He is amazing, too,” she smiles. “We had fun right away. I know how important that relationship is, too; that is the relationship, the love that never ends [for Lulu]. I can’t wait to explore that. Obviously, there is a lot of heartache going on with Dante with the loss of Sam and so many conflicting emotions, but that love is still there, even if they’re not together at the moment. But Dom is great; he was very welcoming and so sweet, and it’s been fun getting to know each other. You want to have a good relationship behind the camera and on, so that you work well together, and he’s sweet. And he’s excited and I’m excited! There’s a lot to explore, especially for him,” with the still-fresh loss of Sam, the woman he was poised to marry before her tragic death.
Presumably, though, Lulu is still in love with Dante. “Where we left off [before her coma], Lulu does still love him,” Havins points out. “So, is it reciprocated? Not yet! Is the love always there? Yes. But his heart is still with Sam, and I’m curious to see where it will go.”
Especially since Lulu doesn’t know yet that Dante and Sam were together, or that Sam was her organ donor….
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