Exclusive: Kristen Vaganos (Molly) On Clashing With GH Heavy-Hitters

Disney/Ricky Middlesworth

As General Hospital 's Molly, Kristen Vaganos is getting to showcase her character's rage toward, well, a lot of different people in Port Charles in the wake of Kristina losing the baby she was carrying for Molly and TJ.

The actress feels that expressing Molly's upset is a richer experience now that she's been on the show for a while. "It's funny, because my first couple of weeks on the show was the surrogate losing the baby, which was take one of Molly trying to have a baby," Vaganos notes. "So I pretty quickly got introduced to the intensity and the workload and being ready with the tears on take one. I feel grateful, looking back now, that I was introduced to that all right away. But now I do feel really settled in and it's fun to compare that moment to this moment because I feel so much more connected to the cast, I feel so much more settled into the role and the environment here and now I really have history. Acting is all about imagination, but the longer you've spent with your castmates and worked on your storyline, you have less to imagine because you've actually lived through it all, so the betrayal feels deeper and the love feels deeper. And luckily, all my castmates that I work with a lot, we all really get along, so there's real love and freedom there to actually play and really yell at each other and really feel all the things."

Sibling Rivalry

That is especially true when it comes to clashing on-screen with GH sister Kate Mansi (Kristina), which she seems likely to be doing a lot of for the foreseeable future. "It's been such a treat," Vaganos smiles. "Kate and I have become such close friends since I've joined the show. It's one of those really lucky situations where we have so much love and trust and care for each other that we can really go there and we don't need to hold back. We overlap our dialogue and we step on each other's toes and we allow it to get a little messy and ugly, which is what it really would look like between sisters. It just feels so organic and we're both so grateful to have each other. I mean, if you want to fight with someone you've just met, great, but if you want to fight with your sister, it's got to look like it's real! Family fights like no one else. And so we're really lucky that we feel like we can really go there with each other. And it's fun! I mean, it's fun to be happy together and it's fun to play friends because we are friends, but it's more fun to be angry! We're loving it."

Brushing off all that animosity when the cameras stop rolling is easy for the actors. Reports Vaganos, "Whenever we finish emotional scenes together, we hug and say, 'I'm so grateful to be doing this with you because I know we can let loose and get real and really be in the moment.' "

Cry, Uncle

Vaganos also had a blast when Molly went off on her uncle, Sonny Corinthos, at the hospital in the wake of Kristina's fall. "It was so fun to read that in the script because it almost feels like you've got to earn the right to yell at Maurice [Benard, Sonny], to yell at Sonny. Like he is the guy! And so to take out the frustration that Molly has been feeling at everybody on him was so fun and such an epic moment. The way that it was written, I really loved, because it was powerful, just unleashing this anger, and he doesn't even really respond or fight back, you know? Which, selfishly, was kind of fun, because he had to just take it! Molly was in this horrible moment and it wouldn't have made it better for him to fight back with me. But yeah, it felt like a privilege, honestly. Maurice was great; he's such a good sport and it was fun to go toe to toe with him. I'd actually love it if next time, he does fight back and we really go at it! I don't think [Molly and Sonny] are going to get along for a little while, so I think we might get that chance."

That's Entertainment

One of Vaganos's most searing scenes surrounding the loss of the baby was Molly laying into Ava while she was behind bars at the PCPD. "Maura [West, Ava] was great !" the actress says of her scene partner. "She's going through so much as this character right now, but I gotta say, my heart, like, snapped in pieces when I read the scenes that she and I did together because how brutal, to literally just read her the autopsy of a dead infant and force her to sit with that. It was so wild to perform those scenes and just try to be strong throughout them because I think Molly did not want to be emotional in that moment. She did not want to be sad. She wanted to be strong and force this woman to hear her out and Ava was pleading with me to stop and I just won't. I have a lot of respect and appreciation for Maura for just sticking through that and suffering through me reading this to her because it's brutal, man. She's such an awesome, awesome lady and she really entertains me on this show whenever she's on screen. I think she does a fantastic job with this character, and whether you perceive Ava to be a villain or not, I think she plays a great villain — Molly is definitely vilifying her and Molly definitely sees her that way at this point, so I'm embracing that perspective. But I just love her work on the show."