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Mom's The Word: Emma Samms describes her surprise on-screen daughter, Sofia Mattsson (Sasha), as "absolutely delightful and an incredible actress."
General Hospital sent shockwaves through its audience when Holly Sutton showed up at the Quartermaine mansion on Wednesday, October 16 and Sasha Gilmore spoke these fateful words after answering the door: "What are you doing here, Mother?" The surprises continued into the Thursday, October 17 episode as Holly revealed, both to Sasha and to the audience, that her father is none other than Robert Scorpio! While this is hardly the first gobsmacking maternity or paternity reveal the show has delivered — click here for a rundown on some of the other biggies — this one has unusually sticky implications, given that Sasha came thisclose to sleeping with her first cousin, Cody!
The Mother Lode
"I knew it was a good story when we were rehearsing in the makeup room to start with and there was a squeal from the makeup department," begins Emma Samms, Holly's portrayer. "That was a good sign! And then another good sign was that when we did the rehearsal upstairs in front of the cameras, even the camera people — who are the most seasoned, and basically disinterested, understandably, after all these years — gasped. There was an audibl e gasp. And I said to myself, 'This is good! This is getting a reaction!' And that's the best you can hope for."
Samms is aware that the twist is likely to stir up some controversy among viewers. "It's going to please some people, it's going to upset some people," she notes. "But it's going to surprise everyone! And that's what you want from a daytime drama. It's as good as it gets, I think, in terms of plot twists, that anybody could have hoped for, really. Certainly me!"
The actress, if you couldn't tell, is a fan of the development. "I'm thrilled," she affirms.
The Sasha/Holly connection came as a surprise to her, as well. She signed on for this most recent return in the dark about the twist. "I knew there was something drastic they had conjured up," she explains. Once she reported for duty, "I went into Frank's [Valentini, executive producer] office and he said, 'This is what's happening.' And I gasped! Seems to be the universal reaction to this story point."
Prior to shooting the reveal episode, not only had Samms never worked with Sofia Mattsson (Sasha), but they'd never actually met. "We met the day we were doing those scenes, so it was all very sudden," Samms says. "It was an emotional scene for both of us, but particularly for her. She's very professional, very focused and I was very impressed by her. She is absolutely delightful and an incredible actress. It's been a complete joy to get to know her and to work with her. She is reminiscent of my daughter," Beatrice Halloway, "which is interesting, because she's got the same height and she looks not dissimilar to my daughter."
That made the tension between Holly and Sasha even more difficult for Samms as an actress. "Holly hasn't been the most ideal mother and that, for me personally, is quite hard to play," she admits. "That is the most important thing in my life, my relationship with my children, so that was a bit awkward. My daughter had to say to me, 'Just go for it, Mum!' You know, 'It's just acting! In real life, you're a very good mother!' So I was like, 'Oh, okay, thank you.' "
Of course, this is not the first secret child that has been scripted for Holly, as it came out in 2009 that she had given birth to a son, Ethan, whose father is Luke Spencer. "They've built up a very elaborate backstory to explain it all," Samms reports. "Which I've had to relay multiple times to multiple people, multiple characters in the show [ laughs ]."
As for why Holly wouldn't have taken the opportunity to come clean about Sasha when the Ethan truth was unraveling, Samms offers, "They have done a very good job of helping Holly justify it — not that she can justify it, but it's explained how it's ended up this way. They have dug down deep into past history, the timeline, where everybody's head was at at the time, and I thank them for that, because it must have taken some digging to come up with that! And all in all, it just boils down to the most fantastic plot twist that I've ever done, I think!"
Another million-dollar question raised by the reveal is why Holly would keep such a massive secret from Robert for so long, Samms declares, "She knows that she didn't do right by Robert — or by Sasha. She knows that and she acknowledges that and she feels very bad it. It's hard to explain, it's hard to excuse that, but deep down, Holly has always tried to do the right thing by everyone. She's a con artist, but she would only — and there was one line of dialogue that actually said this — steal from people who a) could actually afford it and b) had done something far worse to other people. And that's the line in the sand for her. And so despite, you know, all these instincts that she has of how to make money and support herself and support her children, I think she does have a moral line in the sand. Which is not where yours or mine would be! But it is something that she sticks to."
It was, of course, the realization that Sasha was entangled with Cody, the son of Robert's brother, Mac, that made Holly decide she could no longer keep mum about Sasha's pop. "Yes, that's what makes it suddenly urgent," chuckles Samms. "She has to tell everybody because Sasha is involved with her first cousin! She has to say something."
Sasha is not exactly grateful. Their dynamic, Samms allows, "is troubled. It's not like Holly has completely abandoned Sasha, but she hasn't been there consistently. And Sasha, understandably, resents that."
It seems likely that Robert will also harbor some negative feelings about Holly's deception. (While he's no stranger to finding out his ex-wife secretly had their child, he at least got to meet Robin for the first time when she was still a child!) Felicia has urged Holly to come clean to Scorpio, but facing that particular bit of music is a fraught prospect for Holly. "It's a lovely thing, but it's also a scary thing, to admit that she's kept this beautiful daughter from Robert for such a long time," Samms sums up. "The thing Holly fears most is doing something so awful that Robert will hate her — and her worry is that this will be it. And, of course, the longer she didn't tell him, the more she worried about it."
As far as Samms knows, there aren't yet more kids Holly has yet to disclose. But, she winks, "It is a soap, isn't it? Unlimited avenues of potential!"
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