General Hospital: Nancy Lee Grahn Reveals Big News About Her Contract Status as Alexis
General Hospital star Nancy Lee Grahn (Alexis Davis) just dropped some major news about her status with the show: The actress, who made her Port Charles debut in September 1996, has inked a new three-year deal to keep her on GH through 2029.
Nancy Lee Grahn Reveals New Contract
Grahn shared her big career update while appearing as a guest on Soapy, the soap-themed podcast hosted by GH alum Rebecca Budig (ex-Hayden, now Taylor on The Bold and the Beautiful) and Greg Rikaart (Leo, Days of Our Lives). The daytime veteran revealed, “I just re-signed my contract — another three years, and I’m so grateful for this part of my life.”
A three-time Daytime Emmy winner, Grahn kicked off her daytime career in 1980, when she was cast as secretary Beverly Wilkes on One Life to Live. She exited in 1982, and in 1985, she landed the role that truly put her on the soap opera map: lovably neurotic attorney Julia Wainwright on Santa Barbara.
She took home her first Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in 1989 for her work as Julia, and remained with SB until it went off the air in 1993.
Three years later, with her heart set on becoming a mother, Grahn decided she wanted to put down roots in daytime again. She explained to Soap Opera Digest in 2021, “I wanted to have a baby. Soaps are steady and tailor-made for motherhood. Prime-time is trickier, less dependable and the hours are brutal.”
So, in 1996, she called her good friend Michele Val Jean, a former writer for Santa Barbara who was then on General Hospital‘s writing team and later created Beyond the Gates. Val Jean relayed Grahn’s interest in doing another soap to GH’s higher-ups, and before long, Alexis Davis was born.
Grahn’s real-life daughter, Kate, came along in 1998. The actress marveled to Digest in 2023, “I could bring the baby with me; she could be in my dressing room with a nanny. It was just a perfect job to be a single mom with a steady income. I will forever be grateful to [former Head Writer] Richard Culliton and [former Executive Producer] Wendy Riche and [former Writer] Michele Val Jean for bringing me onto this show so that I could have and raise my daughter. I feel like it was divinely orchestrated.”
For her work on GH, Grahn won another Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in 2011, and in 2025, she was awarded the statuette for Outstanding Lead Actress.
Grahn now holds the record among the actresses in the General Hospital cast for the longest consecutive tenure. In September, she will mark her 30th anniversary in Port Charles.
And on Soapy, she indicated that she is still loving life as Alexis. “Thank God that I get to be my age and still have this job,” she beamed. “And I still love it. I still have fun [and] it sometimes really feels good to do really good work.”
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