Kelly Monaco "Extremely Grateful" for 'General Hospital' Family

Kelly Monaco

The famously press-shy Kelly Monaco dished on lots of hot on-set and off-set General Hospital topics in an online interview published Friday.

“I am with this crew every day for the past 16 years, so to me this is my family, and I am extremely grateful,” Monaco said of her overall love of working on GH to On-Air On-Soaps.

It’s no secret that Sam and Monaco both have passionate supporters and vocal detractors, in a classic case of fans conflating a character and her portrayer. Monaco chalks up her critics’ issues with her to two main causes. First, there were appearances in Playboy and Maxim, early on in her career, which she thinks gave fans certain ideas about her. Then she fell in love with Jason while pregnant with Sonny’s child, which she says marked her as “the tramp on the show,” Monaco said.

“I’ve been fighting my way back to goodness ever since,” Monaco said.

It may be just her opinion, but Monaco has an interesting theory about the late Helena Casadine’s true fate. She believes Nikolas gave her a poison that made her appear temporarily dead, but that she’s still alive somewhere! Again, this is only her opinion, not confirmed story progression. But we’d be excited if it were true!

Interviewer Michael Fairman pointed out that the Jason reveal took so long in-story that many fans felt when it finally happened it was anti-climactic.

“I’m excited to see what hoops and obstacles they will have to jump through to prove that they were worth fighting for. I think that’s exciting, but it took them a while to get there,” Monaco said.

Monaco’s expressed hope in the area of Sam’s sartorial choices too. Most fans would be hard-pressed to recall a scene in which Sam wasn’t wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a leather jacket, mostly in black.

“I would love to wear a dress. I love color, clothes, and fashion…Sam doesn’t even carry a purse!” the actress said with a laugh.

Monaco underscored her awareness of the gift of loving her work and her coworkers.

“I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have that every day. I am very fortunate,” the actress said.

Akbi Khan has been a soap mega-fan for 31 years. She has been writing about them and working to save the soap genre for several years. Last May she got her Master’s in rhetoric and composition, for which she completed a thesis on the Save Our Soaps (SOS) movement and created her own SOS group, thistimeitsforever.org. In her spare time she enjoys spending time with family and friends, activism for various progressive causes, traveling down her spiritual path, rollerskating, going dancing, anything having to do with language or words, and laughing heartily and often, and more. You may reach her at [email protected].