Carolyn Hennesy Talks ‘General Hospital’ and ‘Gilmore Girls’ [Exclusive Interview]

Carolyn Hennesy loves nothing more than to entertain and make people laugh.

Though the Daytime Emmy Nominated actress is best known as Diane Miller on General Hospital, she’s also known for her roles on such shows as True Blood, Cougar Town, Revenge, and most recently, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.

I had the chance to chat with Hennesy about her first days on the set of General Hospital and her experience working on Gilmore Girls.

Hennesy said she was grateful to have fans from several demographics, thanks to her roles on so many various kinds of shows, but she does have a preference when it comes to genre.

“It’s basically whatever gets me steady work!” Hennesy laughed.

“Making people laugh is like oxygen to me. That’s what I need to breathe, to be perfectly honest with you. So when people come up to me and say, ‘Oh my God, you made me laugh so hard on Cougar Town — or so hard on Revenge, or things I’m supposed to be deliciously evil [on] and yet manage to kind of slip in some humor, or even on General Hospital — when people come up to me and say, ‘You made me laugh,’ that makes my life.”

“Comedies are the best, but I’m actually about to star in a movie in Atlanta for three weeks,” she continued.

“It’s going to be a role unlike anyone has ever seen me do ever. Very serious, humorless, and very, very dark. So we’re gonna see how my fans react to that. I hope they react well.”

“But I guess the short answer would be no, I don’t have a preference. And if I did have a preference, it would be comedy,” Hennesy admitted.

And even on a show like General Hospital, Hennesy gets to use that humor with her role as Diane Miller.

“I always refer to Diane Miller on General Hospital as the clown act between the trapeze act and the man being shot out of the canon. In other words, there are both high tension, incredibly dramatic, sometimes frightening [scenes], and here comes the clown in the middle to make you laugh and to allow you to breathe. Because the audience needs to breathe,” she said.

“My favorite thing about playing Diane is when she gets to be snarky, and witty, and funny, and wise cracking — that whole combination at once,” Hennesy continued. “For me as an actress, it’s when they allow me, very generously, to go off script, and flavor it a little bit with Carolyn.”

“I get to make really interesting acting choices,” she added.

We’ve come to know and love Diane Miller for nearly eleven years now, but originally, that role was only supposed to last for a couple of episodes.

“I was called in by Mark Teschner, and he said, ‘I’ve got two days of work for you on General Hospital, are you interested?’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ And he said, ‘You’re going to be Sonny Corinthos’ lawyer.’ Actually, he didn’t even add Corinthos, because he just assumed that I knew who Sonny was. He said, ‘You’re gonna be Sonny’s lawyer. And I said, ‘Great! Who’s Sonny?'” Hennesy recalled.

“There was this long silence on the other end of the phone because, you know, as and actress who’s working, you don’t have time to watch during the day, and I’m too tired to watch anything at night, so I sleep! So I hadn’t been watching General Hospital. I said, ‘Who’s Sonny? And there was this long pause on the other end of the phone, and he said, ‘He’s only the hottest character in daytime, and Maurice Benard is the hottest actor in daytime. And I went, ‘Well, that’s groovy.'”

Hennesy then recalled her first scenes on the soap opera, which were with Bradford Anderson as Damien Spinelli. She said Elizabeth Korte, one of the head writers, loves to tell the story of Carolyn’s performance that first day.

“In that first episode, Bradford Anderson, who had already been established as kind of crazy, off-the-wall Damien Spinelli, when he hugged me, she said my reaction to that hug was the thing that everybody noticed. And everybody said, ‘Oh, there’s something here, we need to keep this woman.'”

“Then Maurice and I, the next day, which was only supposed to be my second day of shooting, had a tremendous chemistry,” Hennesy continued.

“So, they kept me on. And Bob Guza — God bless him — expanded the character, gave the character a boyfriend, gave the character an apartment, gave the character a best friendship with Alexis. However the fans may have reacted to Bob Guza, I have nothing but love and respect for him.”

Recently, you may have also seen Carolyn Hennesy on Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, where she played Toni, a member of the D.A.R. Though Hennesy hadn’t watched the original series when it was first aired, she was thrilled to get to be a part of the revival.

“Just to be a part of what was an iconic show, I mean a legendary show. I was one of the very few people on this planet that had obviously been living in a cave when the show was on originally, because I hadn’t seen it,” Hennesy admitted. She did say she watched the series once she got the part in the revival, though, and noted how the D.A.R. was such a large a part of Emily Gilmore’s life.

Hennesy got to be a part of a pivotal moment for Emily Gilmore (played by Kelly Bishop) in the revival, when Emily decides that actually, it’s all “bullsh*t.”

“What’s interesting is that she makes the decision to A. curse, and B. to call us all out on our ruthlessness, our pettiness, our falsities, our disingenuousness. Then I make the decision to not ask her back, and she’s fine with that. She basically pushes my character into excommunicating her from the D.A.R. And she’s fine with it,” Hennesy said.

“It was a hilarious but brutal scene.”

And a highlight of being on Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, for Hennesy, was the chance to work with Kelly Bishop.

“I only worked with Kelly Bishop in terms of the regular cast, and the rest were my fellow D.A.R. members — and Julie Marie Berman — what a lovely little General Hospital reunion that was! But I’ll tell you, working with Kelly Bishop, Broadway actress, Broadway star, Tony award-winner — I actually saw her in A Chorus Line in New York. I saw that Tony Award-winning performance that she gave,” Hennesy recalled.

“She’s a walking master class, to be perfectly honest with you. She is smart, sharp as a tack, knows her character inside and out, takes no quote unquote bullshit from anybody. [She] knew her lines forwards and backwards, and thanks to Amy Sherman-Palladino, which is customary for Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, has a boatload to say. And she was spot on every single time. She is what I like to call a ‘broad’ in the best sense of the word,” Hennesy continued. “She has this amazing attitude on set, and it just is infectious. I was very lucky to work her.”

As if she weren’t busy enough with acting, Hennesy is also a New York Times Best-selling author for a series of children’s novels based on the classic Greek myth of Pandora, the first of which is titled, Pandora Gets Jealous.

“It’s a re-telling of that classical Greek myth, but in my version, Pandora is a 13-year-old girl, [and] she’s got her two best friends with her,” Hennesy began.

“I took a lot from my own notebook from when I was a 13-year-old girl,” she said. “It was an incredible catharsis to write.”

In the beginning of the story, Pandora finds the box containing all the evils of the world, and brings it to school for a project. When all the evils are released into the world, Pandora is given a choice. She’ll either have to live in torment along with her family, or she’ll have to retrieve everything that got out of the box.

“She chooses to step up to the plate and accept her responsibility, and she accepts the quest,” Hennesy explained.

That is a major theme throughout the seven books, which Hennesy described as something she thinks kids aren’t being taught enough these days. “When you step up to the plate and take responsibility for your personal actions, sometimes you get to go on the best adventure of your life,” she said.

Be sure to catch Carolyn Hennesy on General Hospital, airing weekdays at 3/2c on ABC, and on Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, which is currently available for streaming on Netflix.

Featured image credit: Suzette Troche-Stapp

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