Scene and Heard

Kimberly McCullough was cast as Robin at the tender age of 7, and establishing a personal style that was distinct from her character’s was important to her throughout her formative years. “I remember going to a fan club event when I was little in a matching pink satin tops and bottoms with my high-tops [sneakers] that my mother had sewn sequins into, and my hair was crimped,” she chuckles. “Even then, I was really trying to differentiate Robin’s style from Kimberly’s style. If I ever had an opportunity to do that, I did it really hard!” Growing up, she notes, “I was a tomboy, a break dancer,” so Robin’s girly-girl style was amusing to her. “I remember so many white, frilly socks, the ones that fold over with the lace, that sat in my dressing room, because they would sometimes give me a choice of two or three. I always thought that was so funny! I was like, ‘Wait, what is this?!’ That was not the way I dressed at all.”

When Sarah Brown, who created the role of Carly, left the show after a 1996-2001 run, she told then-ABC Daytime chief Brian Frons who she thought should replace her: the current Carly, Laura Wright. Recalls Brown, “When I left the role, I suggested Miss Laura Wright for the character because I believed in her talent and I thought, ‘She will carry this torch.’ I was never not impressed with her work. She was one of the people on soaps, where, if there was a television playing and Laura was on, I would stop and watch. I admired her. I just knew she had it what it takes and I wanted her to play Carly. My little gift to the network was like, ‘Hey, if you want the best person to play this role, this is the best person I have seen that has the chops to go to the places that Carly needs to go to for Carly to keep growing as a character.” Of course, at the time, GH went in a different direction, hiring Tamara Braun, who was super-successful in her own 2001-05 stint in Carly’s shoes. On the show’s anniversary episode in 2014, all three actresses appeared in scenes with Maurice Benard (Sonny). “I remember a strange thing,” says Braun about that triple-Carly day. “Sarah was on set doing her scene with Maurice when they called me up — she was incredible, by the way. But I walked on to set and caught a glimpse of her from the side and for the first time saw what everyone has seen in terms of resemblance [between herself and Brown]. I have never seen it myself but people do all the time. My mom made a scrapbook of my time on GH. One day during my tenure I was home and looking at it. She had put a photo of Sarah in there and I let her know that wasn’t me. I told Sarah about that. She said her dad had done a similar thing with me!”

During Jonathan Jackson’s original stint as Lucky, he wondered aloud to TV dad Anthony Geary (ex-Luke) about why Lucky didn’t have a dog. Geary spoke to the show’s higher-ups and soon, Foster the dog entered the Spencer household. “Foster was a lovely dog,” says Jackson. “But [working with him] was more practical for me at that time because the only way to kind of get through the scenes and to get him to do what you wanted was to have these dog treats in your hand, like, during the scenes. And so I would be acting and trying to do my scenes and I would have these kind of unpleasant dog treats in my hand. I’d basically have pieces of hot dog in my hand, subtly feeding him while I was trying to do my scenes. So I was kind of pleased when that [storyline] ended because I was like, ‘Okay, at least I don’t have to deal with that anymore!’ But he was a very, very sweet dog.”