General Hospital’s Kelly Kruger: Playing Serena Baldwin ‘Feels Right to Me’
Serena Baldwin is back on General Hospital — and when Kelly Kruger stepped into the role in the Thursday, July 30 episode, it marked a full-circle return to daytime for the former Young and the Restless and Bold and the Beautiful actress.
Why Kelly Kruger Returned to Daytime
In a new interview with TV Insider, Kruger admitted she never saw this particular opportunity coming. Though she’d taped an audition for General Hospital years ago, by the time the show reached out, she’d largely stepped away from chasing acting jobs and was focused on her career as a social media beauty influencer. Then, out of the blue, her agent called with an offer based on that earlier tape.
Said Kruger, “I have chills talking about it because in that moment, I was like, ‘I don’t think I’m done with acting the way I thought I was. This feels right to me. I want to do this. Daytime has a very special place in my heart.’”
Kruger previously played MacKenzie Browning on The Young and the Restless (2002–03, with later appearances in 2018–19) and appeared on The Bold and the Beautiful as Forrester publicist Eva. But General Hospital was always a goal, and she told TV Insider she felt an immediate connection to the show and its history.
Part of that is personal: when Kruger first moved to Los Angeles, she was close friends with Kelly Monaco (ex-Sam McCall), who she said “was like a big sister to me.” Early in her acting career, she noted, she learned a lot about the soap world by being around Monaco. She has also known Kelly Thiebaud (Britt Westbourne) since they met as 18-year-old models, “so just to reconnect [at GH] was insane,” Kruger marveled.
Kelly Kruger’s Early Days as Serena Baldwin
As a newcomer to Port Charles, Kruger shared that the cast and crew have all been very welcoming, and she was particularly thrilled to make an “instant connection” with her TV mom, Lynn Herring (Lucy). “I felt like we knew each other for 1,000 years,” she declared. “She instantly took me under her wing, and we had such chemistry off the bat.”
Serena’s father, Scott, hasn’t been on screen since August 2024, but Kruger said she’d be thrilled to work with his portrayer, Kin Shriner. “I would love to explore that father-daughter dynamic,” she shared. “I don’t have a relationship with my dad in real life, so anytime I get to play that dynamic, especially if it’s a fun story to play, I would absolutely love the opportunity.”
Who Is Serena Now?
Fans know Serena best as a little girl during Schroeder’s 1997-2003 run on spinoff soap Port Charles. The last time she was seen on screen was when Schroeder reprised the role for two episodes of GH in 2017. As an adult, Serena had become an environmental crusader, and Scott flew off to Denmark in 2022 to help her after she’d been arrested confronting dolphin hunters.
Calling Serena “my favorite character I’ve ever played,” Kruger is eager to see what the writers have in store for her newest soap alter ego, describing her as “a good person who might have made some questionable decisions. At the end of the day, she wants to do good, she wants to be good, but she loves her family, and the way she was nurtured is that maybe you do things that you have to do to get by and see where it goes.”
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Soap Opera Digest does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.