General Hospital’s Leslie Charleson’s Final Interview Reflecting on Her Decades as Monica (EXCL)
In the spring of 2023, Soap Opera Digest published a special issue celebrating the 60th anniversary of General Hospital, and I was the lucky editor who got to speak to long-running star Leslie Charleson. Leslie joined the show in 1977 as Monica Bard Quartermaine but her on-screen appearances had become more sporadic as she battled real-life health issues, and it had been a few years since I’d last had the pleasure connecting with her. In what turned out to be her final interview, Leslie generously spent an hour on the phone with me, looking back on her years in Port Charles with candor and humor and more wonderful behind-the-scenes anecdotes than we had space to print.
Hidden Gems
One such previously unpublished story was about the late Susan Brown, who played Gail Baldwin, saving her from a wardrobe malfunction. “It was Alan and Monica’s engagement party, and I had on this beautiful, two-piece silk skirt and top,” Leslie recalled. “It was peach-colored and it was very sheer. We were going up on stage, and she just looked at me and said, ‘Come here.’ And she pulled back the front of the blouse that I had on and [inside] it said ‘back.’ It was the only label on the whole damn outfit, and it said ‘back’! So we got behind some flats and she helped me struggle out of it and turn the damn thing around!”
At another point in our talk, she brought up the character of Dawn Winthrop, Monica’s long-lost daughter, who was played by four different actresses in the two years she was on the show (1989-91). Leslie chuckled as she mentioned “all those Dawns,” and continued, “That was ridiculous! I just remember that there was one time when Joe Hardy was the producer and I had inadvertently got a haircut, and forgot that the next day I had to match [what I looked like] the previous day. So I went to Joe and I said, ‘The way I look at it, Joe, is that you gave me four Dawns, the least I can do is get one haircut!’ And he just stood there and he said, ‘You have a point!’ ”
Leslie also shared memories of working with Stuart Damon, her longtime leading man as Alan Quartermaine, Monica’s husband. Her fan club had once made a booklet chronicling Alan and Monica’s tumultuous relationship, titling it War and Peace, and she had recently thumbed through it. “What a wonderful ride,” she said fondly. “As I was looking over the history of Alan and Monica and everybody else that came into their lives, I thought, ‘My God, they were busy!’ And that was the fun of Stuart and I playing together, because we were both totally dysfunctional pillars of the community [laughs]. It was ridiculously funny, and I have to say, there was much more laughter than tears.”
Toward the end of our conversation, I told Leslie that I felt the show’s longevity was thanks in no small part to the contributions of veteran stars such as herself. “I don’t believe that there is a General Hospital today without the foundation that Leslie Charleson helped to set,” were my exact words. “Well, what I nice thing to say,” she replied. “That’s really very special. I never thought about it that way. I just really kind of thought, ‘It’s nice to have a job.’ ”
Then, perhaps because on some level I knew it might be the last time I would get to connect with Leslie, I told her, “I just want to say — really, on behalf of the audience — how loved you are, how appreciated you are and how much respect the General Hospital fans have for you.” “Oh, I’m so grateful,” she told me. “Thank you so much. And I wouldn’t have been around if it hadn’t been for them! And thank God they came around,” she winked, referencing the audience’s early resistance to her as a recast. “I’m truly, truly, humbled and grateful.”
It was a conversation I’ll never forget. Below, please enjoy the abridged version that made it into print.
In Her Own Words
When Leslie Charleson moved to L.A. from New York, “I had decided I’d had enough of soaps; I was moving on.” But her old boss from Love is a Many Splendored Thing, Tom Donovan, who was then head honcho at GH, “persuaded me to come in and meet with him, and he persuaded me to join the cast.” The next 45-plus years, she smiles, “went by in the blink of an eye.”
What stands out to you about your early days at GH? “It was a pretty miserable beginning for me as Monica. Nobody really liked me because I guess they had let [the role’s originator] Patsy Rahn go rather unceremoniously. And I started the day Elvis Presley died, which was devastating to me as a lifelong fan. Plus, not only did Tom [Donovan] talk me into doing the soap, but then he left! And there I was, not knowing who or what a Monica was, not having a clue as to what to do with her. All Tom said to me was, ‘You make her what you want to make her.’ Looking back now, it was kind of wonderful because I was given free reign, because nobody was really saying, ‘Well, Monica wouldn’t do that.’ I didn’t know what Monica would do or wouldn’t do, so I went ahead and did what I decided she would do.”
Who did you work with in the beginning? “Susan Brown [ex-Gail], Chris Robinson [ex-Rick] and Denise Alexander [ex-Lesley]. Denise, we’re great friends now, by the way, but then, she was very scary! She was intimidating because she was kind of the queen bee.”
The show was live on tape then, which meant long days at the studio. “They were the longest days in history, especially with Gloria [Monty, then-executive producer]. We would go sometimes until 2 or 3 a.m. and have to be back at 7. It was grueling. It was the kind of schedule where you never stopped bitching about it—you bitched if you didn’t work, and you bitched if you did work! We used to start rehearsals after lunch, then have a dress rehearsal, and we wouldn’t start taping the show until 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I remember Jane Elliot [Tracy] and I once went to the movies because we weren’t taping our scenes until the end of the show.”
What do you remember about the start of your long working relationship with Stuart Damon (ex-Alan)? “I met Stuart when I auditioned the Alan wannabes. He was by far the best — and not very hard on the eyes at all! We really got along. Our dressing rooms were next to each other, and we had a lot of good times, just talking. The whole [Quartermaine] tribe — David Lewis [ex-Edward] and Anna Lee [ex-Lila] and Jane — got along and loved each other and had more fun working together than ever. I mean, it was just a delight to look at the script and say, ‘Oh, we’re all going to be in the Quartermaine living room — this should only take seven hours to get through [laughs]!’ Being able to work with good people, having good writing, it doesn’t get better than that. I mean, that’s why I stuck around. Because otherwise, what’s the point?”
Did you notice more people recognizing you when GH became the hottest show on TV in the early 1980s? “Oh, Lord, yes — it was Luke and Laura, and Alan and Monica, and because we came into people’s living rooms, people felt like they knew us. I remember we would go and visit colleges, and the kids would be there in [hospital] scrubs. That was fun. At that time, there was no DVR; you had to watch it at the time it aired or you missed it altogether, and I had fans say to me, ‘I changed my major because I didn’t want to miss the show!’ And people who said we must have been English because we repeated things over and over again.”
In 1994, Monica was diagnosed with breast cancer, one of the finest medical stories GH has ever told. “Wendy Riche, then-EP, and Claire Labine, [then-Head Writer] were women in charge of the show and in charge of the breast cancer storyline. Interestingly enough, we had all either gone through it or knew someone close to us who had, so we all had a vested interest in making sure we really had this real. This was one of the first times the show got into a medical story in such depth. We stopped freezing the town or Lassa Fever and all of that. It was important and difficult and rewarding, because we all did our homework. I really wanted to portray it in the most honest, realistic way we could.”
When you think about the career you’ve had on the show, its longevity and its impact, what does it mean to you? “Well, I haven’t really contemplated it because it just sort of went by. Again, I just have to say, ‘Why leave a good thing?’ There were rough spots, sure there were really rough spots, but when aren’t there? There have been a lot of producers in the time I’ve been there, good, some good, not so good, but we’ve managed to stay afloat, which means somebody cares and wants to keep looking after us. And as long as that is being done, we’re in good shape.”
Sweet Child O’ Mine: “Monica wanted that to be Rick’s baby,” recalls Charleson, pictured as Monica at A.J.’s 1980 christening with (from left) Rick (Chris Robinson), Gail (Susan Brown) and Alan. “I think it was Lila who said, ‘But it’s the Quartermaine mole!’ That good old mole that crushed everything [laughs].”
Conversation
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