‘General Hospital’ Brings ‘One Life To Live’ Actress On Board
Get ready, General Hospital fans, because the ABC soap is bringing a familiar face to Port Charles very soon. Many may remember actress Hillary B. Smith from the former daytime drama One Life To Live. She is now returning as her old character of Nora Buchanan, but this time on GH.
Executive Producer Frank Valentini had teased that there was a special announcement coming and that got fans quite excited waiting for him to spill his news. Many General Hospital fans speculated that maybe they were bringing back Tyler Christopher to reprise his role as Nikolas Cassadine. However, that was not to be. Tuesday’s announcement finally came as Valentini sent a short video on Twitter spilling the secret.
The clip showed a judge coming out of an elevator yelling the name of Nora Buchanan. Hillary is then seen walking through part of the General Hospital set as she passed by actress Rebecca Budig, who then announced that Smith would be joining the soap soon. Budig came from All My Children, which also got canned at the same time as OLTL.
— Frank Valentini (@valentinifrank) February 1, 2017
It has been close to five years since One Life To Live went off the air, along with All My Children. The only soap left on ABC is General Hospital and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. Now that ABC has once again regained the rights to those two former shows, they are free to use the actors and actresses as they want. There had been rumors swirling that they would decide to start bringing some of them on board and it has now come true.
Hillary B. Smith will most likely be just the start of bringing some of the most beloved characters in daytime TV back. There is already three familiar faces that have come to Port Charles and are all regulars now. Actors Michael Easton and Roger Howarth have both built their characters of Hamilton Finn and Franco Baldwin and are two very popular guys on General Hospital. Rebecca Budig has snagged a contract as well as Hayden Barnes.
There are so many big names that could possibly be brought back to reprise their former characters. One of them is Susan Lucci. She is one of the most popular actresses in the business. Her feisty role as Pine Valley’s Erica Kane is one that could be most interesting to come to Port Charles.
Lucci and some of her former co-stars of All My Children are planning on a reunion on February 2 as she plays co-host for a week on Hallmark’s Home & Family. It was just recently announced by People that she will be sitting down with them to take a walk down memory lane. Fans will get to hear some stories and share some of the best moments on the former soap. Is this an indication that any of those faces could make it back to ABC?
As exciting as this announcement may be that Hillary B. Smith is making her way to Port Charles, there are many fans that have mixed feelings about it all. Some have said that they should not be bringing any more characters on board and that the soap should be trying to use the ones that seemed to have been pushed aside. They have expressed that they have enough former One Life To Live actors already. However, there are others that are quite thrilled that Nora Buchanan is being brought to General Hospital.
There are no details just yet on how long Smith will be sticking around. It looks like Nora will continue as a lawyer, but that is about all that is known right now. With Alexis Davis choosing to put off getting her license back, Nora could be taking her place in the courtroom for a bit. She could be going head-to-head with Diane and that could get interesting.
What are your thoughts on bringing Hillary B Smith to General Hospital?
[Featured Image by Jason Merritt/Getty Images]
