General Hospital’s Emma Samms Pays Tribute To Anthony Geary: ‘He Gave Me Confidence’ (Exclusive)
When Emma Samms was cast on General Hospital as Holly Sutton back in 1982, she was immediately thrust into a major storyline with the show’s most high-profile leading man, Anthony Geary (Luke), who passed away at the age of 78 on December 14. In the storyline at the time, Luke’s beloved wife, Laura (Genie Francis), was presumed dead, and the show’s efforts to pair him with a new love interest — Demi Moore, who played Jackie Templeton — had failed, so the show was counting on Samms and Geary to click on-screen. While Luke and Holly ultimately didn’t go the distance, their fling proved to be a pivotal plot point that ultimately catapulted Holly into her storied romance with Luke’s best friend, Robert Scorpio, played by the late Tristan Rogers. In the wake of Geary’s death, Soap Opera Digest checked in with Samms about her memories of sharing the stage with the beloved actor.
The Man, The Myth, The Legend
As Samms recalled to Digest in 2021, she first met Geary at her screen test: “They were just looking to see if there was any chemistry and what he thought of me, obviously; he played a big part in the decision [to hire me], for which I have thanked him multiple times.”
While GH had crested in popularity the previous year, reaching its ratings peak with the November nuptials of Luke and Laura, the show was very much still in its heyday — and coming aboard as Luke’s new love interest was about as high-pressure a situation as existed in the world of daytime television at the time. But for Samms, ignorance was bliss. “I came into General Hospital not realizing enough, probably, about what a big deal it was,” she explained. “I hadn’t watched the show, so I didn’t know about Luke and Laura — and that actually was probably a real blessing because I would have been massively intimidated, and it was intimidating enough as it was, to be thrown in at the deep end.”
Holly was Samms’s first major professional role. Geary, by contrast, was not only the undisputed superstar of GH, but had just taken home his first Daytime Emmy as Outstanding Lead Actor for his work as the wily iconoclast. Says the actress, “Tony played a dangerous, unpredictable bad boy on General Hospital, but he was only ever supportive, kind and patient with me. When I started working with him in 1982, I was 21 years old. He was in his thirties. He basically taught me how to act.”
To hear her tell it, she couldn’t have asked for a better teacher. “He was so good at his craft,” she declares. “He took it seriously. He made brave, unexpected choices, forcing anyone in a scene with him to listen and pay attention. And he was funny. Breaking the tension of a day’s worth of soap melodrama with a nudge, a wink or a moment of naughtiness.
“I knew that Luke and Holly would never be Luke and Laura, we all knew that, but he didn’t allow comparisons,” Samms continues. “He gave me confidence as an actor and as a person, listening to my trials and tribulations with a sympathetic and encouraging ear. Always.”
Samms remained with GH until 1985, going on to play Fallon on Dynasty. When she returned to Port Charles from 1992-93, she was again paired with Geary, who at the time had taken on the role of Luke’s look-alike cousin, Bill Eckert. Starting in 2006, she made a smattering of subsequent visits after Geary resumed playing Luke, and in 2009, it was revealed that the characters shared an adult son, Ethan Lovett (Nathan Parsons). In 2015, when Geary announced his retirement from GH, Samms came back again to help close out his storyline with one last adventure.
After his departure from the show, Geary moved full-time to his beloved adopted home city, Amsterdam, where he lived with his husband, Claudio Gama. Says Samms, “I loved that he stepped away and made a new life for himself on the other side of the world. And I loved that he found love. He deserved it. All of us lucky enough to have spent time with him knew that.”
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