Exclusive: Kristina Wagner Reflects On 40 Years As GH's Felicia

On September 7, 1984, General Hospital introduced audiences to daytime’s first Aztec princess, Felicia Cummings, played by then-unknown 22-year old Kristina Malandro (later Kristina Wagner), who moved from her native Indiana to take on the role. Felicia’s pairing with Jack Wagner’s Frisco Jones was a smash hit, propelling the actress to the height of soap fame. She’s come and gone from the role over the years, but 40 years later, she’s still an essential part of the Port Charles fabric. “It’s an honor to be in this position,” she says. “Not many people are.” She looked back on her run with Soap Opera Digest.

 

Soap Opera Digest: You were still living in the Midwest and hadn’t really experienced the reality of being a working actor when you first auditioned for GH. Was life in California a culture shock for you at first?

Kristina Wagner: All of it was! It was a completely different culture and environment, and different types of people that I had never dealt with. I was very sheltered growing up, and I was in a marriage, too, at the time; I was married when I was, like, 18 years old. So, yeah, it was walking into another planet. But I think I had the type of personality that just kind of allowed myself to just keep going forward, you know? “Okay, this opportunity has presented itself. Sure, I’ll go that way.” I wasn’t ever that type of person that would stop to question.

Digest: It’s not a rarity that soap operas introduce new characters, but it is something of a rarity that new characters hit the ground running the way that Felicia did, where everything seemed to work together to bring the audience into her story. Looking back, why do you think it all seemed to have that little touch of magic that made the fans fall in love with the character?

Wagner: Well, I think that the writers, and especially Gloria Monty, the [executive] producer at the time, really wanted this character to take off. I’m sure I disappointed her here and there. But then, as we started to work together, Jack and I, I think a lot of that had to do with some real-life chemistry [the actors were married from 1993-2006] that was attractive. Even to Gloria. She sort of had a track record of wanting her couples to be together in real life. [Maybe] I’m projecting that; I don’t know that for a fact, but that’s sort of her track record. I think it had a lot to do with the chemistry of Frisco and Felicia. I remember that she used to bring the writers up on set to watch us because we improvised so much back in the day — not now, but back in the day, because we had time to — and she would say, “Do it like that, write it like that.” So it was almost like we had this amazing opportunity to sort of lead the way with it. I don’t want to take credit fully for that, but I think she wanted the writers to write our personalities and the way we were relating to each other on stage, especially during rehearsals, because we were really goofy and we were free and just having a lot of fun. I think they were watching us like a hawk just to see what we were like and they wrote accordingly.

Digest: Do you look back on that early period as fun, or was it so much work that fun was sort of catch as catch can?

Wagner: Well, it was riveting. It was fun; it was something entirely new. But it was so hard because I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, I didn’t know what the [soap] world was like. I didn’t know how to navigate being on a stage with five cameras. I didn’t know anything! I didn’t even pronounce words properly because I was an Indiana girl. There were lots of mess-ups and embarrassing moments where I was humiliated and got laughed at, at that time, because it was a much different time when everybody was less protected emotionally. And so I failed miserably in so many different ways with my own ego, in my thinking of myself. But I just kept going and tried to pay attention and when I messed up, I learned from it. And it was nice to have Gloria believe in us, you know? She really wanted [Frisco and Felicia] to work. She really, I think, liked the chemistry with us. It was the ’80s, so it was the supercouple times, you know?

Digest: And it was also the era of big hair. I don’t think anyone on daytime had hair longer than yours at its longest!

Wagner: Well, that was a hardship as well, though! Because when I first came on the show, I was a very low-maintenance person. I didn’t wear makeup and my hair was long because I didn’t engage with any styles! I never did the Farrah Fawcett haircut or all those trendy, Dorothy Hamill things at the time. I just grew my hair because I had better things to do than to think about what I looked like! I kind of didn’t care. I don’t know if that was a good or a bad thing in hindsight. That was a hard lesson, though, learning to have a little bit of on-camera vanity. I didn’t care, so that was a hardship for me. I remember the first time they put full Felicia glamour garb on my face, which was a couple of weeks in because [Felicia was posing as] a boy in the, beginning. It was glamour make-up and I went in my dressing room and I looked in the mirror and I thought, “Wow, I don’t even look like me, anymore.” And I remember thinking that I looked like an entirely different person with all this glamour makeup on my face. And then I just started to play that game. I think emotionally, I never really assumed the role of that glamour girl. I don’t know who she was. I never related to her. Thinking about what that might have meant for me in my development, I don’t know if that was actually good, but I didn’t have that sense of, “What do I look like on the outside? I just wanted to perform and run and go ice skating. But today, it’s probably good because I’m more conscientious of my health and how that projects with the way I look, because my face is going to be on camera. And wellness, well-being, shows in what you look like.

Princess Bride: Kristina Wagner and Jack Wagner at the 1986 wedding of their GH characters, Frisco and Felicia.

Digest: In the 1980s, GH stars got sacks and sacks of fan mail. How did you manage yours?

Wagner: My mom [who passed away last year]! She was a secretary through her life and had typing skills and other skills and she ran my fan club very successfully. You can’t ask for a better fan club president than her — totally invested, very proud of her daughter. I’m so grateful that she did that. She was very personal with the fans and it helped me a lot. We had a lot of phone calls from my dressing room, because back then, we had landlines in our dressing room, talking about fan club stuff and she did such a great job. I’m so grateful that my mama wanted to do that for me. I miss her very, very much.

Digest: I remember you saying that she kept scrapbooks of your career, all your Soap Opera Digest covers and articles.

Wagner: That’s right! I have them in my house now, because we had to go clear out her house in April. My brother and sister-in-law were saying, “What do you want to do with all this stuff?” It was like a room full of VHS tapes that she had recorded; she recorded the show every day, and she had all the [fan club] newsletter stuff and all the 8x10s and all the magazines she collected. Anything that even had just a blurb of Kristina in there, she wanted it.

Digest: Because of your real-life relationship with Jack, you also had to learn how to navigate a heightened interest in your personal life by the media, by fans, and learn how to protect your privacy.

Wagner: Yeah, and my pregnancies [with son Peter, who was born in 1990, and son Harrison, who was born in 1994 and passed away in 2022]. It was all foreign; I didn’t know what to protect or how or why and, who am I really protecting [myself] from? It was unchartered territory and just trial and error. You just find your way with it and I think we did the best we could. I remember the first time with baby Peter, we were on a [Soap Opera Update] cover for Christmas. Peter was what, four months old, I think, in that picture, and he was sleeping the whole time [during the photo shoot] and we couldn’t get him to open his eyes. The photographer really wanted those eyes open, and so, you know, you’d jiggle him a little bit and he’d open his eyes and they’d snap the shot. And when we got in the car to drive home afterwards, I cried and Jack was upset. We were upset that we had to jiggle the baby to keep his eyes open. It was like, “Okay, we’re not gonna do that again!” That was the first realization of, “How are we gonna start protecting them?” I mean, that was just one little element of it. Taking them out in public, we were a little more high-profile back then because there was less TV, and we were recognized a lot more. We had to find our way with that kind of thing.

Digest: Especially having become a mom during your years on the show, you also had to figure out that work/life balance, as well.

Wagner: In my early motherhood, that was challenging for me. I have memories of sitting in my dressing room, talking to my mom on the phone and crying because my boys were home with a babysitter and I had to wait and do my scenes later; I was just sitting in my dressing room waiting. Back then, it was a lot of just sitting around and waiting and that was very frustrating. And, you know, I can go into that head space and say, “If only I had been there for them more, things today would be different.” But that’s toxic thinking. It’s always important to be forgiving of oneself, you know? You can’t live in that headspace. But we also bought this ranch when Harrison was, like, 3, and on Friday night, I’d drive home right after work, pick up the boys, load up the truck and drive out to the ranch and get there at midnight on Friday night, when they were still young enough and didn’t need to go out and be with all their friends, back in those magical golden days when you still have control of your children. So, we’d go to the ranch and be there until Sunday night, then hustle back for the next day of Monday obligations. That was a real magical time, really lovely. I’m grateful for all that.

Digest: What does being on General Hospital mean to the Kristina Wagner of 2024?

Wagner: Well, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say I’m an entirely different person today than I was then, in the early days. Entirely different. Like any human, a lot has happened in my life and a lot of hardships have happened in my life. And it’s easier to say today that I sit here in gratitude for having weathered a lot of things, and to sit here and be able to find joy, newfound joy, with all the stuff that’s coming my way at work, in my personal life. I think I’ve evolved and I like me better today than I did that girl then. But that girl then, I mean, she was on her way! She was finding her way. She messed up a lot as I do now, but she stood back up and she was very resilient. [Today] I’m just taking life as it is and accepting it and I welcome the things that come my way, even though they give me a problem or I don’t agree with them. I feel much more peaceful with the “what is” — it’s easier to accept the “what is” in my life…. I’ve done a lot of work on myself, and I’ve been in a lot of different programs and helped myself along this journey, and I’m glad I did, because the things that have happened to me could really have taken me out, and that’s not gonna happen. I’m gonna keep going, as much as I can. And I want to stay on the show for as long as they’ll have me — and as long as I can remember lines and deliver and be somewhat interesting! But I’m really grateful to be standing here. I embrace my life, all of it. And I have to say, there’s been an awful lot of luck along the way. I’m very privileged, and I’m very aware of that, which has expanded as I’ve educated myself.

Scorpios Rising: Earlier this year, Wagner and on-screen stepson Josh Kelly (Cody) helped welcome her GH hubby, John J. York (Mac), back to the show after a health-related hiatus.

Digest: I really admire that you took time away from the show to focus on other things in your life, as well, including going back to school, and that you’ve been so candid about working on yourself.

Wagner: Well, I had help, you know? And I think it’s because I asked for help. I went to places where I could get help. I don’t believe that any of us can do this kind of stuff by ourselves. It’s not doable. We need people around us that give us loving support and that can guide us in the right direction and be there for you, that’ll pick up the phone and you can talk to them and cry if you have to, or will give you some good guidance. People you trust. I think that’s really, really critical.

Digest: A lot of people reading this can likely remember watching your very first day on the show. What would you like to say to your longtime fans on this occasion?

Wagner: Thank you. I appreciate them more than they know, and more than I can express. Our hope is to keep the show going for as long as we can and continue to entertain and tell good stories, express love and connection with other people. It’s really been a great ride to be connected with all of them all these years. They’ve been nothing but kind to me. I just want to send my love and hugs to them all.