In a shocking cliffhanger that viewers saw on Thursday’s episode of “General Hospital,” the not-so-dead Nina Clay turned out to be alive. The other part of the cliffhanger was…the role is being played by multiple Daytime Emmy winner, Michelle Stafford. The actress is known to soap audiences for her role of Phyllis Summers on “The Young and the Restless.”
Just how were they able to pull off this huge surprise to the audiences without it leaking to the masses? Daytime Confidential’s own Jamey Giddens got the scoop with head writer, Ron Carlivati, on how this was accomplished:
DC: While rumors of her joining GH ran rampant for almost an entire year, you actually managed to sneak Stafford’s casting in under the radar. How did you manage to accomplish that?
RC: GH has been on hiatus for the past two weeks and Michelle doesn’t really start taping until we resume. But we realized that as soon as she did, the news would be out there long before her episodes began airing. It was actually Frank’s idea to try to slip her into an earlier show that had already been written and shot, so we could take everyone by surprise. So he snuck her into the studio recently, at the end of the day, to tape the one scene you just saw. That was inserted after the fact. We’ve been sweating it out ever since that it would stay under wraps!
Expect Nina Clay to shake things up for Silas/Sam, Ava Jerome, Nathan West, Liesl Obrecht, and Madeline. Look for Michelle Stafford to hit her full stride as Nina Clay sometime later this season on ABC Daytime’s “General Hospital.”
