INTERVIEW
General Hospital’s Carly ‘Wants To Take Jack Down’ After His Betrayal, Says Laura Wright (EXCLUSIVE)
Secrets — specifically, his need to keep them from her as a professional necessity, given his role with the WSB — have been a theme throughout Carly’s relationship with Jack Brennan on General Hospital. For months now, a particularly gigantic one has been looming as a potential threat to the couple’s happiness: Brennan recruited Carly’s daughter, Josslyn, to become a WSB agent. Now the truth is out — and “it is utterly devastating” to Carly, declares her portrayer, Laura Wright, who chatted with Soap Opera Digest about the far-reaching consequences of Brennan’s betrayal.
Secrets Are No Fun
Josslyn returned to Port Charles after her mission to Croatia with two more people in her midst aware of her status with the WSB: Britt, who is near the top of Carly’s least favorite people, and Jason, her mom’s best friend. As viewers saw on the October 16 episode, it was Jason who ultimately spilled the beans, unable to stomach what he sees as Carly’s misplaced trust in Brennan. “Jason is basically like, ‘I can’t handle this anymore. He’s a liar,’ ” begins Wright. “When Jason tells her, she’s confused. She doesn’t believe him at first because, well, who would believe that? She’s like, ‘What are you talking about?’ She’s like, ‘Vaughn is the WSB agent, not Josslyn,’ you know? And he’s like, ‘Carly, stop.’ And he just tells her everything and her head is literally spinning. I thought they were really great scenes, really well-written. She is like, ‘What the actual hell?!’ “
The idea that her lover has been keeping her in the dark about something that pertains to one of her offspring cuts particularly deep for Carly because she had opened up to him about the pain of losing her son Morgan and how she didn’t think she would be able to survive something happening to another child. Now, she finds out that all the while, he knew that Joss was putting her life on the line for the WSB. “She’s just utterly rocked and devastated,” the actress says. “I mean, this is her kid. And here’s the thing: Jason has been warning her about this person. Anna has been warning her about this person from the beginning. And she fought and fought and fought: ‘No, no.’ She told Jack, ‘I believe you and I trust you.’ So, she is freaking livid and hurt and like, ‘Are you kidding me?! My daughter’s now a spy, which means every day she wakes up someone could slit her throat?’ She is in utter shock. She’s sitting here going, ‘Jason knew. Anna knew. Jack betrayed me while he was in my bed. My daughter didn’t feel like she could tell me. What has happened to my life?’ “
Silence Is Deadly
Complicating matters even further is that there are huge risks to Joss’s cover being blown, so Carly can’t let either her daughter or her lover know that she knows the truth. “She wants to run and just grab her daughter and get her out of the situation and Jason is like, ‘You can’t do that because that puts her in danger.’ So she has to pretend she doesn’t know anything — to both of them.”
Under the circumstances, expect Carly’s next encounters with both Jack and Josslyn to be “intense,” Wright says. “She goes to Jack and she flat-out asks, ‘I need you to promise me that if you ever think Josslyn is in danger, you’ll tell me,’ and he’s like, ‘Absolutely.’ And she just stares at him, like, ‘I cannot believe you just lied to my face.’ “
Needless to say, Carly won’t take kindly to that. “It’s kind of funny,” muses Wright. “When I go on fan events, one of the questions I get is, ‘What do you think Carly’s gonna do [when she finds out]?’ And I’m like, ‘What do you think Carly’s gonna do? I don’t think she’s gonna take it well!’ “
On the Josslyn front, “The first time Carly sees her after she finds out, she can’t say anything, but she’s trying to get her to tell her,” the actress previews. “She’s like, ‘I feel like we’ve been distant and I feel like you’ve had a lot going on.’ And she also knows that the Easter Island trip [that Joss claimed to take, when really she was in WSB training] was a scam, and Joss says, ‘That Easter Island trip was the best thing that could ever have happened to me.’ ” That’s a jolt for Carly, as well. “She realizes, ‘My God, my daughter loves this.’ There’s a lot of stuff going on! The scenes are incredible. Carly’s like, ‘But you know you can always come to me…’ It’s heartbreaking for Carly that her daughter is doing something that she loves and won’t tell her. It’s all devastating.”
Points out the GH star, “As an actor, you have to put it in perspective that in Carly’s mind, this isn’t, ‘Oh, my daughter is dating some guy I don’t like.’ She’s a spy! It’s like, ‘When she goes away, I may never see her again and they might send her body back in pieces. And if I say anything, they could ship her off on a mission and I never see her again.’ This is big-world stuff! It’s all way out of Carly’s control of what she can fix and manage and handle. This is someone who always puts her kids first and wants to control everything happening to them — and Josslyn could not be further out of her control.”
But this is Carly we’re talking about — and if you guessed that for once in her life, Carly would sit back and do nothing, you’d be wrong. She very much wants revenge on Brennan — and, teases Wright, “Carly’s going to handle it her way. I mean, this is Carly we’re talking about! In her mind, it’s, ‘I’m gonna do whatever I have to do.’
“It’s very, very tricky,” she concludes. “She’s like, ‘I’m taking him down and I’m going to protect my daughter.’ She’s not 100 percent sure of her plan, but she’s trying to figure it out!”
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