Anna had to sit out the Nurses’ Ball this year, but thanks to the magic of a fantasy sequence, we still got to see you dance! How did that day go with your dancing partner, James Patrick Stuart (Valentin)? “I feel like we kind of made it through, you know what I mean? He said to me, ‘Finola, you can’t have me doing the tango!’ He said, ‘I will be really scared.’ ”
He told me that he was more nervous to dance with you than he was to work with Meryl Streep on It’s Complicated. “Excellent. Oh, gosh, that’s really cool. Phideaux [Xavier] was directing it and he actually asked us to come in on a Sunday, and we all went in on a Sunday and rehearsed and it was really good. I was just very concerned that I might look like a sort of aging aunt at a wedding, you know, when they dance in a long dress? I was like, ‘Am I there yet? Is that what I look like? Am I the aunt at the wedding?’ I asked the producers, ‘Have I jumped the shark [laughs]?’ It will come! That day will come when they’re like, ‘You know, why don’t you just sit. You can hold the scorecard up.’ ”
I think you’ve got many, many years before you need to worry about that. So, I also want to mention how much fans enjoyed seeing Anna and Holly team up during Emma Samms’s most recent stint on the show. Was that fun for you? “Oh, definitely. It was so nice to work with Emma. We just had a great time when she was hear and got to spend some time together. She’s just a class act. She’s so lovely, so great.”
Their mission to Greenland was a success, they vanquished Victor, but upon her return to Port Charles, Anna has had to deal with some troubles with the WSB over her long-ago affiliation with the DVX. “Right. I really didn’t know that was coming down the pipeline! Frank [Valentini, executive producer] didn’t give me much of a heads-up on that one. For Anna, it’s a gut punch. It comes out left field when she suddenly gets arrested. It was pretty quick and pretty cold! I think it’s really interesting and kind of sad, this twist. I think Anna says — or maybe I imagined her saying it because it’s what I was thinking, perhaps, that Anna would be feeling — that [her high standing in the WSB] this is everything she’s ever worked toward. And she has just succeeded in helping to bring somebody down that was going to be extremely damaging the world, and now, she is being used as a way for the WSB to have a clean slate. They’re using Anna as a way to say, ‘We are turning out backs on our old methodology, we are going to say it never happened and we’re going to lay all of the responsibility for that kind of conduct on Anna Devane.We’re going to distance ourselves from her and basically cancel her!’ ”
What was your reaction to learning that this stuff from Anna’s past was going to have these current-day repercussions for her? “I think it’s an interesting part of her history and I think there’s a lot of stuff to be mined there and for her to face some of that stuff. What does that look like within her close circle of friends when she’s annihilated in the press? What does that look like not only for her, but for other people who love her. I think it’s good!”
