Since returning to GH as Lois, Rena Sofer has relished sharing the stage once more with Jane Elliot (Tracy). When it came to establishing what the characters’ dynamic looks like in the present, “Jane and I never discussed it,” Sofer shares. “I think the wonderful and great thing about coming back and doing this [role] 30 years later is that both Jane and I are 30 years older. We are not acting like we did 30 years ago and we both have 30 years more experience as a human being and a woman and an actor. And so do when we get to face off, we get to face off! I mean, I’m not playing Lois as I would have if she were 25. I’m playing her as a mother of an adult grown woman who’s making her own choices and as Lois, I’m not scared of Tracy! Lois, in the beginning, she wasn’t scared of Tracy, but at the same time, she was a fish out of water. She didn’t belong in this Quartermaine world. Don’t forget; she grew up in Brooklyn n New York. She grew up with street smarts. She’s not an idiot, so even back then, she had enough intelligence to understand what was going on and how to take care of herself and protect herself. And look, she did the ultimate protecting of herself, didn’t she? She walked away from a situation that wasn’t good for her. She went back to where she knows and she built a life for herself and raised her child. So that’s who Lois is and that’s what she did. So when she’s coming back and looking at Tracy, Tracy is not scary to her, you know? Tracy is who she doesn’t trust but who she knows loves her daughter and doesn’t scare her. And I don’t think that Jane or I needed to have a conversation about that. But working with Jane is one of the greatest gifts and joys of coming back to GENERAL HOSPTAL because I left that show a child and I’m coming back as a mother of an adult, I’ve had an incredible career and a life with my husband/ex-husband/fiancé [Sanford Bookstaver] and I come back to this show with humility, with compassion and with incredible, incredible gratitude that I don’t think I had the first time I was there.” Even as she embraces her theatrical reunion with Elliot, Sofer misses the presence of late co-stars like John Ingle (ex-Edward) and Anna Lee (ex-Lila). “Being on that set and seeing pictures of John and Anna just made me cry. It was hard — it was really hard.”
