Disney/Christine Bartolucci
A Kiss Before Dying? Jason (Steve Burton) and Anna (Finola Hughes) shared a surprise smooch.
Finola Hughes was delighted when she found out that her adventurous General Hospital alter ego, Anna Devane, was poised for yet another overseas escapade — this time, alongside Steve Burton’s Jason Morgan, as the pair set out to try to rescue Lucky Spencer from the villainous clutches of Carlo Rota’s Sidwell. “This is her first big caper in a while,” Hughes notes. “Anna hadn’t been on a caper in quite some time. And I was so excited; Steve was the one who told me. We were in my room rehearsing something and he told me, ‘We’re gonna go try to rescue Lucky!’ And I did not think I would be going to do that — I thought maybe it would be Brennan. So I was very excited. It was really good news — and it’s a good caper, too!”
The international arc of the story kicked off when the characters infiltrated a Nairobi casino. “The set was fantastic!” she praises. “Just incredible. And the costumes were amazing and the actors were just lovely, too. So we had a great day [shooting those scenes].”
Hughes particularly loved that the scenes once again reunited Anna and Holly when they least expected it. Working with Holly’s portrayer, Emma Samms, “has been really great,” she smiles. “We’ve had time to really work together and laugh and just visit and that has been so good. We’ve sort of caught up a lot more this time and just had a chance to sort of enjoy each other. She’s such a great lady. She’s very, very funny and always ready to laugh at things and has got a wonderful sense of humor. And so we’ve just had a really good time.”
This story marks the first time that Hughes has gotten to work with Jonathan Jackson as Lucky. “We’ve never overlapped before,” Hughes marvels. “And it’s just been so lovely. He is just so gentle and easy to work with and you can see what he’s thinking, which I really love. You can tell that he worked with Tony [Geary, ex-Luke] for many years. There’s a definite mark [on his approach to his work].”
Hughes had another new scene partner in Carlo Rota, whose Sidwell has marked Anna and Jason for death. Hughes became a fast fan of the actor, declaring him to be “an excellent villain. He was really up for playing, which is great. What I love in a villain is when you deliver something and they take it and figure out a way to one-up you, which is really clever. He’s got that gene. He’s very sort of slick and enigmatic, and you’ve got to be on your game to play with him, which I love.”
What’s The Deal With Jason?
Key to Anna’s adventure is, of course, her travel companion, Jason. Hughes has been working more consistently with Burton of late and gives the experience rave reviews. “I love working with Steve,” she says. “He’s so great. He’s just a master at figuring out the beats in the scene. He’s a very wily actor, very instinctual, and that’s kind of what I like. I respond to that, I think because it’s similar to how I work. I’ve enjoyed every moment of it so far.”
The actress thinks that the life-or-death predicament Anna and Jason find themselves in has brought a new depth to their relationship. “I think she’s surprised at how much she was able to rely on him,” Hughes observes. “To find people who give their word and stick to it, I think that goes a long way with Anna. She’s always found herself with somebody who’s on the wrong side of the law — not that that [type of relationship] is what’s happening with Jason, but in the past she’s nearly always found it interesting to work with someone who’s on the other side of the law because I think Anna maybe justice is the point, rather than what the legal system hold up. Because sometimes I do think every now and again, one might have to be a bit of a vigilante [to get justice].”
Hughes continues, “I think she’s been surprised by Jason. I think she got annoyed with him that he went back to Sonny and I think that she had some very good points about, ‘You don’t know who you are without him.’ I’m not sure that she’s trying to pull him into the police force at all, but I do think that she would prefer him to maybe be working on the right side of the law, and away from Sonny. I think Anna is very tired of going up against Sonny and never being able to prove that he’s guilty of something. And I think she knows that Jason knows that he’s guilty of killing John Cates.”
While for Anna, proof tying Sonny to that murder is thus far elusive, Hughes saw it go down with her own eyes when it was filmed. “I was standing on the stage,” she shares. “I watched it myself because it was such a good scene, and they had rain. I just had to go upstairs and watch it because it was so good!” She says she’s got to hand it to the writers for how Jason disposed of the murder weapon by dissolving it in acid. “The PCPD is screwed again!” she teases. “But it’s very clever, because there are no holes in that, you know?”
Lip Service
In a rather unexpected twist, Jason and Anna ended up sharing a kiss at the end of the Thursday, September 26 episode. “I think it’s something that just happens,” Hughes offers, admitting that when she found out about the buss, “It was a bit of a shock. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from.” But once she understood the circumstances of it better, she says, “It’s motivated by a lot of things, and we discussed it at length, Steve and me.”
As Hughes sees it, the kiss is born out of the heightened circumstances of thinking they truly are doomed to die. “The situation is very dire and it’s really interesting because both Jason and Anna have been in these circumstances before,” she notes. “So, we tried to figure out, within that, ways to try to play with our own psyches as to how we were coping with what was going on. We discussed all sorts of things [in advance of taping the kiss] because, you know, it’s not their first barbecue! But there is something different about these circumstances, and luckily, we were working with an actor [Rota] whose [believability] was very helpful in all of that, in it seeming like we were going to die, more so than in other situations.”
As for the consequences of the kiss — should Anna and Jason survive, of course — Hughes says, “I’m very interested to see how it’s going to play out!”
