General Hospital Exclusive: Kelly Thiebaud On Britt, Cassius — and Blowing Up Josslyn’s WSB Secret
The big General Hospital reveal that “Nathan” is actually an impostor — and that Britt has known the truth about his identity all along — has created a new dynamic for Kelly Thiebaud (Britt) and Ryan Paevey (Cassius) to play in Port Charles. Soap Opera Digest spoke with Thiebaud about working with Paevey, Britt’s relationship with her surprise brother and why Britt exposed Josslyn (Eden McCoy) as a WSB agent.
Brotherly Love
Paevey returned to GH last year just a few months after Thiebaud did, and their reunion has been a treat for the actress. She beams, “It’s just been so wonderful to have him back and to actually work with him! When he first came onto the show [as Nathan at the end of 2013], I was kind of heading out — it was right towards the end of my contract, so we didn’t actually work together a ton. It’s been really refreshing and so much fun to really spend time together and get to know each other and work together. I think we have really great on-camera chemistry and banter with each other. I really enjoy working with him.”
Not only did Britt know who “Nathan” really was ever since he miraculously resurfaced eight years after his apparent death, but so did Thiebaud. “I knew when Ryan started that he wasn’t going to be Nathan, even when it wasn’t out in the open,” she says. “We didn’t know when that [reveal] was going to hit, so we’d just been kind of waiting to see when it was going to be exposed and I was wondering how he was going to play this evil twin. I think he’s a really fantastic job. There’s just a little bit more edge and aggression to Cassius. It’s been so fun and I’m excited to see where the writers are going to go with it and what’s going to happen between the two of them. I think there’s something really cool with these two siblings. They’re both kind of evil and make bad decisions, and it’s fun to have him in my corner but also know that I can’t fully trust him. It’s been a joy.”
Well, with one exception. “I’m not looking forward to my mother [Obrecht, played by Kathleen Gati] finding out that I knew about all of this!” she teases in character. “That’s not gonna be fun!”
The More You Know
On screen, the tension around the secret of Cassius’s identity went to a whole new level on the April 30 episode when Britt, fearing that Josslyn was zeroing in on the truth, revealed to her brother that the young woman he dismissed as a “ditzy sorority girl” is actually an undercover WSB agent.
With so much at stake, Thiebaud believes that Britt spilled the beans about Joss “for the greater good.” She explains, “In Britt’s eyes, [the truth about Cassius] needs to stay under wraps because of all the people that are involved. It just seems like it’s best for everyone if no one knows who he is. I mean, everything has just gotten so complicated — he’s fallen in love with Lulu [Alexa Havins], which wasn’t supposed to happen, and there’s a kid [Nathan’s son, James] involved… There are a lot of people involved that she’s concerned about!”
Not that her motives are entirely selfless. “In a way, she’s wanting to save a little bit of her own reputation,” Thiebaud admits. “People finding out about Cassius would expose what she’s involved in and what she agreed to do” — namely, help Sidwell (Carlo Rota) and Cullum (Andrew Hawkes) bring Faison’s dangerous cold fusion project to fruition in exchange for the medication that keeps her Huntington’s disease under control. “And now Josslyn is digging around, and she’s connected to Carly [Laura Wright] and to Jason [Steve Burton] and that whole dynamic,” she sighs. “It’s messy!”
The truth coming out and that chaos that could cause is the last thing Britt needs; she was already coping with a string of misfortunes when she learned that Rocco (Finn Carr), not Jason, shot Cullum. “It’s been a really tough time for her,” sighs Thiebaud. “Jason’s gone, she didn’t get her meds, Marco [Adrian Anchondo] died, she’s still dealing with Cullum and then she finds out that Rocco is massively involved in all this! There are all these different levels of pain and stress, and she’s at her breaking point.”
Loose Lips Sink WSB Agents?
All of which is to say that Britt blabbed Josslyn’s secret to keep Cassius’s secret safe, not to put any sort of target on Jason’s goddaughter. “Britt doesn’t think he’ll do anything to her because it would be too risky,” the actress reasons. “She feels like he would be smart enough not to do anything irrational. It seems like he’s really sticking to this whole ‘I’m Nathan and no one is ever gonna find out that I’m not’ thing because he wants Lulu, he wants to have this family. Britt isn’t concerned about what he’ll do; it’s more like, ‘Hey, you think you’re doing well with pretending to be this person, but I’m just warning you, people are onto you. You need to be better at playing this lie.'”
But, Thiebaud allows, she doesn’t necessarily know this guy well enough to know what he might do with the information she’s given him. “He is a little bit of a loose cannon,” she notes. “And she is still learning about who he is, so there’s a lot of trust that needs to be built. On the one hand, there is a bond between them — but on the other, he is unpredictable and selfish and going after his own needs.”
Conversation
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