General Hospital News & Gossip
News for the week of 08-Sep-2008
Returning to GH short-term appealed to Genie Francis (Laura), because it afforded her the opportunity to play out an important mother-daughter bond with the very-talented Julie Marie Berman (Lulu). Oh, Francis hoped to play out more family bonds, with Laura’s boys, with Laura’s soul mate, but for now, it’s a thrill to be there for Berman’s Lulu in fleshing out an emotional rut following the accidental death of Logan. Francis is already back in L.A. with her entire clan; husband Jonathan Frakes is busy working on a TNT series called Leveragestarring Timothy Hutton, she’s gonna work on a sequel to the Hallmark Channel’s hit movie, The Note, and their children will see how they like living and learning in California. A lot of Francis’s professional plans depend on Jameson, 14, and Elizabeth, 11, adjusting to life in California, after spending so much of their formative years in Maine (and in London before that). They haven’t left their home base of Maine, yet. She has a thriving furnishings boutique business there, friends, roots. Sounds like a lot’s up in the air. The small stints from time and time seem to suit her for the moment.
Head writer Bob Guza Jr. affirmed a Laura return next month, and promised that this time, her condition will not be to fade away like last time, during the 2006 November Sweeps.
Julie Marie Berman is so worlds apart from her tragic alter-ego Lulu that it’s been challenging to say the least to draw upon anything real to help her get in such a downward state of mind for her dramatically heavy storyline. Berman said she’s so opposite of Lulu in that she’s happily married to real estate guy Mike Grady (the wedding took place on August 15th).
Brandon Barash’s (Johnny) rise to acting is typical of a lot of young soap stars. He didn’t start out wanting to perform, he sort of fell into it somehow. With Barash, it was when his basketball playing got derailed with an injury. He was also handicapped as the new kid in school when his family moved from Calabasas, CA at age 14 to Houston, TX. It took him about two years to fit in and feel comfortable amidst his new surroundings. Turning to acting when he did helped a lot. While attending Houston’s Memorial High (he graduted in 1998), Barash was able to bring Daddy Warbucks to life in a production of Annie. He wasn’t satisfied putting on a bald cap either; he kept his head shaved to keep in character. “It’s interesting how differently people treat you when you have hair and when you don’t.” His curriculum was impressive for such an atypical student. He was in HOSA (Health Occupation Students of America), a two-year deal enabling him to bone up on physiology and anatomy, as well as shadowing real doctors and surgeons. As for the acting, his efforts paid off when he won a Best Actor award in a University Interscholastic League competition, playing Tom Cruise’s character in A Few Good Men. –Soap Opera Digest, “Flashback To School,” September 9, 2008
Bradford Anderson (Spinelli) encountered, then faced an acting challenge head-on when his character started finding himself prone a lot – suffering from heat stroke, as a hospital patient suffering from a busted spleen, recovering at Jason’s penthouse. Anderson said lying prone pushed him to really concentrate and do his acting from a deeper place other than relying on his physicality as a prop and accent.
Judging by their acting successes and the positive reviews from fan encounters, one would assume Jason Thompson (Patrick) and Bruce Weitz (Anthony) were model students and model kids. One would be wrong. Thompson readily admitted to a period where he wasn’t paying enough attention to class and chattering too much. His distractive behavior got so bad, he had to eventually learn in a class of his own called the boot room for a year. The boot room housed jackets and boots, and for that one year, Thompson at his desk. Weitz said his issue was getting into a lot of fights, landing in jail, while working out his shorter stature from the other students his age. “But I’ve calmed down since,” he added. –Soap Opera Digest, September 9, 2008
Lisa LoCicero (ex-Sonia, OLTL) accepted the role of Olivia, Kate’s cousin who once had a fling with Sonny back in Bensonhurst. Olivia will disrupt Kate and Sonny’s wedding ceremony September 19th, with a jaw-dropping reveal.
B&B had a chance to really use all of Antonio Sabato Jr.’s (Jagger, GH:NS) assets back in 2005-06 as Dante, but according to the February 29th-born actor, they really didn’t. After toiling in relative on-screen obscurity for about a year, Sabato had had enough and asked to go. Following his brief B&B tenure, he filmed five movies and wound up sort of back on GH where he started in 1992 as Jagger. Sort of, meaning, he’s on GH’s SOAPnet spinoff, NS. He may cross over to GH, but tells people to wait until he’s done with NS first. While away from soaps, he’s also appeared on a couple TV shows as a guest star and at least two reality-TV shows that tested his mettle. He didn’t mention 2005’s But Can They Sing? when he claimed not to want to do reality-TV in general. But he did raise up his recent winning stint on Celebrity Circus as a reality-TV show worth appearing in, testifying to the hard work and the challenge of grueling, long practice sessions. One of the acts had him training for about two months, doing tricks on training poles. “It wasn’t cheesy; it was colorful and elegant. It had heart and to actually win it was unbelievable.” Besides work, running his own, fairly new Beverly Hills Italian restaurant named Prego, and traveling the world, Sabato enjoys time with his children; he has two from two different, past relationships—daughter Mina, 6, and Jack, 14. When it’s their time to hang out with dad, they’re pretty close and easygoing with a veritable zoo at his house, a rottweiler, a lab, a cockapoo and one big bed, which they all share. He’s proud of his kids, proud to proclaim that he never experienced any bratty period, not even when they were two and three. His kids often visited on-set when he trained for Celebrity Circus, with daughter Mina able to do some acrobatics of her own. He’s got a pretty full plate for a single dad and successful actor. As for relationships, you never know, he has to get over his discomfort in the dating scene first. He tends to be in long-term relationships, and has quite often found himself faced with a chance at seeing a new woman that catches his eye, but at a loss as to how to proceed. “I went out the other night and there was a pretty attractive girl, and she was looking and I was looking and I didn’t know what to do, so I went home,” he explained. –Soap Opera Digest, “Pick Jagger” by Stephanie Sloane, September 9, 2008
Part of the perks of a GH:NS slot for Sabato has been his dressing room’s prime location next to the bathroom/shower. He half-joked around that if he got to keep his dressing room, he’d be all up on GH once an offer was extended.
Stand up and take notice, folks. The master – Joseph C. Phillips (ex-Justus) – comes back to daytime, but not for GH (idiots)… for the #1-rated soap in the nation, Y&R. Unfortunately, the job is as a guest star; he’ll be playing a securities and exchange commission agent. Phillips has a book out entitled, “He Talk Like A White Boy.”
Gossip for the week of 08-Sep-2008
Everybody seems to want Genie Francis to stay on GH as Laura, the fans, the co-stars. What about TPTB? When will they stop using her as a means to overly feature Lulu? Her brief return – to interact solely with Lulu as her saving mental grace – kind of cheapens the soap and its history, IMHO.
Elizabeth and Jason have relations, then part ways. A car accident renders her unconscious and missing, then suffering from amnesia. People think she’s died. Right along this same time, Karpov’s attorney, the Slavic Seductress Sasha comes upon Jason and Elizabeth’s paternity secret. Could explain the car accident as staged. Or how’s this? Jason and Elizabeth stage the car accident death, and eventually ride off into the sunset on his hog. A veteran PCO/SZ poster named Marty suggested TPTB kill off Elizabeth already, since she’s outlived her welcome, doing nothing of worth other than pining after a glorified hitman. If they can’t come up with a better storyline for her than this, I’m inclined to agree. Alas, it seems the mob force is here to stay.
Carly reels Jax back in by inseminating herself with his leftover sperm (from when he and Courtney tried to conceive via surrogate Liz).
If this spumor’s true then boo for the writers. They could’ve put together a compelling 12 Angry Men redo, with Edward surprising everyone by being the only juror to believe Johnny’s innocent based on the facts coming out in the court case. (12 Angry Men was a 1957 classic, directed by Sidney Lumet and featuring Lee J. Cobb and John Fiedler, and adapted from a play by Reginald Rose. In that movie, one juror managed to turn the tide for the defendant.) Instead, Edward will be on Johnny’s side, maybe because Anthony made it worth the old coot’s while.
Kate will relent and go ahead with the wedding. The wedding will be jaw-dropping and bloody, with people dropping like flies amidst gunfire and explosions. One of them could be Kate, injured or dead. Or maybe Olivia. Or, who gives a crap?!
Steve Burton (Jason) may be pulling in so much serious coin with his MonaVie side business that he won’t need to stay on GH for much longer, past his November contract expiration. His character could meet up with the funeral director, if you know what I mean.
Rick Hearst (Ric) and TPTB are still in the midst of contract talks. TPTB are prepared with his exit story (perhaps as one of those bodies dropping) in case talks don’t go well.
The GH board was abuzz last week Thursday with talk about Ingo Rademacher’s (Jax) reported open letter to GH’s cast and crew about MonaVie, and the lure of selling it for many fans who desired also to gain access to their soap stars. Rademacher – who was approached to join in the MonaVie sell (Steve Burton/Jason is heavily involved in) and declined – has thought long and hard about the subject after reading up on it, and issued the following: “We often ask a lot of our fans and certainly they are responsible for their own choices and have the freedom to make them but I believe we must be very careful not to push the bounds of decency and cross lines that should not be crossed. There have a been a slew of fans, as well as several media outlets who have expressed outrage and disappointment in what they feel is a wide spread campaign by cast members on this show to exploit their dedicated and loyalty fanbase by asking their participation in a multilevel marketing venture that ensures windfalls for those lucky enough to be at the top with little reward (if any) for those entering on the bottom. The minor celebrity status granted to all of us because of our involvement in a successful television show must always be considered a privilege, not a right and certainly not a commodity to be brokered for personal gain. I truly believe the long term detriment to our reputation as a whole cast and crew far outweighs and is further reaching than the short-term profits gained by a select few.”
General Hospital News & Gossip, Copyright © 2008 Carol Banks Weber. Published by SoapZone.com / Jeff Jungblut. No part of this page may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Opinions expressed on this page are those of the author and may not be representative of SoapZone.com or its advertisers. Don't steal scoops.
