General Hospital: Drew’s Shooter Revealed — Katelyn MacMullen Dishes Aftermath For Willow (Exclusive)

Since sleazy Congressman Drew Cain was shot twice in the back one dark and stormy night on General Hospital last September, the show has kept the question of who pulled the trigger on the front burner. On the January 8 episode, the culprit was finally revealed — and it turns out that the many fans who guessed that the shooter was the politician’s own wife, Willow, were right! Soap Opera Digest got the inside scoop from Willow’s portrayer, Katelyn MacMullen, about how she reacted to the twist, what it all means for her character and more.

Guess Who?

When GH initially filmed Drew’s shooting, a decoy actor was used as the shadowy assailant to preserve the secret — even to the cast and crew — of which character in the sea of potential suspects was the guilty party. And given all the juicy possibilities that come with being the guilty party, many an actor on the show had their fingers crossed that their character would turn out to be the shooter. “I can think of 10 actors that are basically hoping it’s them that got to shoot Drew,” Cameron Mathison (Drew) chuckled to Digest last fall. “Everybody wants to be the one!”

The subject of who pulled the trigger was, of course, a hot topic among the show’s actors. MacMullen recalls, “We were all sitting there going, ‘Who did it? Who do you think did it?’ I was open to it [being Willow]; I thought it would be really interesting if she was the one who did it. But I thought, ‘Whatever way the writers decide to go, no matter what, it’ll be really fun and exciting to see who it is.'”

And for several months, MacMullen had no confirmation that Willow, who had been arrested for the crime, was guilty as charged. The big news was eventually delivered to her casually on set. “I found out about a week before we started shooting the trial scenes,” she reports. “I kind of suspected — I mean, I always knew that it was a strong possibility — but I didn’t know for sure until a little birdie, [Executive Producer] Frank Valentini, whispered in my ear. He said, ‘You know you shot him, right?’ I was like, ‘No!’ There was a brief moment of surprise, because we’d all been wondering for so long, and then I thought, ‘Okay, great! This is gonna be crazy — but really fun!'”

The More You Know

Looking back on how she played Willow in advance of knowing that the character was, indeed, guilty, the actress says, “I don’t think I would have changed anything.” Not knowing that Willow pulled the trigger might have even made it easier for her to play the many scenes in which Willow tearfully and persuasively proclaimed her innocence and insisted that she’d been set up by her ex, Michael (Rory Gibson) — but committing to portraying Willow as believing in her own innocence was a conscious decision she had made early on in the tale in talking it through with her acting coach, Holly Gagnier, whose own soap roles include Ivy Selejko on Days of Our Lives and Jennifer Smith on GH. Explains MacMullen, “She said to me, ‘Even if you did it, you would think you’re innocent — you’d walk around like you’re an innocent person.'”

Throughout the storyline, MacMullen — along with other actors whose characters had motive to shoot Drew — were directed to keep the mystery going in their performances, layering in moments designed to keep the audience guessing. “Our directors were so good at shaping the scenes where there were little moments of, ‘Oh, they could have done it, or they could have done it,'” she notes. “You would find those moments where you could give a certain look, or do something at a certain moment that makes your character appear quite guilty, where it could appear that you actually did it. And we were all kind of carrying around secrets and stuff, so we all looked very guilty [laughs]! I thought the show did a great job of setting up a real whodunit.”

In the end, she says she’s glad she didn’t know sooner. “It made it more of a surprise, even for me as the person playing the character,” she points out. “I felt like it was surprising and cool, and it leads to more questions and possibilities, like, did she always remember doing it? Did she not remember doing it? It is a surprise to her, too?”

For MacMullen, the story has only gotten more compelling following the reveal, in flashbacks, of how Willow executed the shooting. “What I love about soaps is that you expect the unexpected and you get to put yourself in situations that you would never normally experience. It’s just so much fun,” she enthuses. “And because there was always a part of me that wondered [if it was Willow] — like I said, we were all wondering and we were all so curious and we’d come into work and be like, ‘Dude, did anybody find out who did it?’ — so to know it was her, but wonder why she did what she did and the nature of it and where she goes from here … All of it is just so interesting to me. I can’t justify what she did, but I can at least try to sympathize with where the character was at that point. And that’s been a cool challenge — to try to get into the mind of someone who might be a little bit out of their mind!”

The End of the Innocence

MacMullen went into filming the reveal uncertain of whether Willow has known all along that she was guilty of the crime she was charged with or not. She muses, “Maybe she has known this whole time; maybe she’s remembering as she’s walking up to the stand like, ‘Something doesn’t feel right.’ Or maybe she’s remembering in that moment when she’s having those flashbacks like, ‘Oh, I didn’t remember that, but now I have to really cover it up,’ you know?” But in preparing for the scenes, she shares, “My coach and I were kind of playing with the idea of her remembering what she did, right then and there. And being that it’s a flashback and a memory, I don’t know if she is fully convinced and believes that she did it! But it will be interesting to see where the story goes in terms of how much she truly remembers and if she was out of her mind that night.”

While it was Willow’s flashbacks that revealed her guilt to the audience, it was a sound — specifically, the custom “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” ringtone that plays on Willow’s phone when she receives a call from her son, Wiley — that tips off Trina (Tabyana Ali) and Kai (Jens Austin Astrup) to the fact that Willow pulled the trigger, as they heard the tune when they were secretly hiding out in Drew’s house at the time he was shot. Raves MacMullen, “I just loved that. I thought it was so great. When I read that script, I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is so amazing!’ Tabyana and I were laughing together in hair and makeup and just both saying how much we loved how everything came together. I thought it was written so well.”

While the “who did it” aspect of the whodunit has been resolved, other huge question marks remain, including what Trina and Kai will do with what they know and whether the jury will vote to convict or acquit Willow. One thing is for certain: the drama is far from over! MacMullen winks, “When Frank first told me that it was Willow, he said, ‘You’re going to have some really fun stuff to play with.’ And that has definitely been true.”