Now that Mannequin Hope appears to be in the rearview mirror (for now?), portrayer Annika Noelle (Hope) admits that she will miss her alter alter ego. “That story was so fun!” the actress enthuses. “It was a really nice change of pace to hang up the Hope hat for a second and get to play a sinister mannequin. It was an entirely different persona. It required a different voice, different movement; it was such a fun challenge. It certainly added a new level to Hope and Thomas’s complicated relationship. It was great to get the scripts and read what was going to happen next. I have to say it was a little unnerving at first but Matthew [Atkinson, Thomas] and I just dove right in. Personally, I love how Hope can rationalize things as best she can. She is always trying to make things okay, and that is her Achilles’ heel.”
Cynthia Watros (Nina) had a blast working with former co-star/secret on-screen daughter Chloe Lanier (ex-Nelle) in the short time they intersected on GH. “She is so lovely and so packed full of talent and so interesting and complex,” Watros praises. “You see this person who has so much tal- ent and just know she’s just going to create really amazing things, not only as an actor but as a writer, a producer, a director — whatever she wants to do, she’s going to be able to do it. She has all the stuff that you need to be a star. I hope she shines her light really bright out there in the world.” Lanier says that she, too, is grateful for the chance to have shared the stage with Watros. “Cynthia is the best,” Lanier declares. “She is such a lovely person and was so wonderful and kind to me. I absolutely loved work- ing with her. I wish we had had more scenes together before I left! She just has the biggest, kindest heart and she’s an amazing actress, too. Our final scenes were pretty heated and it wasn’t easy to have to be mean to her as Nelle!”
Sal Stowers admits that there is one aspect of Lani becoming a mother that is disappointing to her. “With the pandemic, we can’t have real babies on set, which sucks because I love me some babies!” she exclaims. “And to be able to play with twins? Oh, my goodness, I was so excited for that. Like, I couldn’t wait. And I know we’ll get to have kids back on set again soon but that does play a part into the story right now.” Stowers reports that the show has worked hard to make lifelike replicas of Jules and Carver. “When I do get to work with the babies, they’re dolls and that’s hard, too,” she says. “But big props to our prop team. They have actually done really well with getting custom babies. These babies look very real, from their eye- lashes and noses down to their skin color. They really tried to match their skin tone with mine and Lamon’s [Archey, Eli] skin tones, so it looks like if Lamon and I actually had babies, maybe this would be their skin tone. We also have the dolls that, as they get older, they can mimic breathing, which is cool. So they did really well with getting us dolls that look and feel real because they’re heavy! And we have a boy and a girl so we can tell them apart. So I am thankful for that.” And as a special treat, “They let me pick out some things as far as a diaper bag and bassinet and things like that, so that was really sweet. I have really enjoyed getting to tell this story.”
Long before she landed on PASSIONS, Dana Sparks (ex- Grace/Faith), who now plays Y&R’s Dr. Cavett, appeared on the prime- time soap FALCON CREST. In 1986, she became the second actress to assume the role of Vickie Gioberti. “Vickie was a really fun part, and it’s so much fun to see people putting up clips of FALCON CREST on social media,” shares Sparks. “It’s a really wonderful thing to walk down memory lane and I’m always going, ‘Wow! I forgot about that one scene.’ It was such a fun show to do. It really was.” She has never met her predecessor, Jamie Rose, who went on to become an in-demand guest star on a string of TV shows through the years, but they have communicated with each other. “When I recently posted on Instagram that I had booked something, Jamie was one of the first people who gave me big props,” smiles Sparks. “I thought it was really cool when I saw that, and it was very sweet of her to do. Since then we’ve chatted on Instagram but we do want to meet in person one of these days. I’m a big fan of hers, too, and she seems like a super-nice person. It shows you that the entertainment business is such a small world.”
Photo credit: Courtesy of Dana Sparks