Disney/Christine Bartolucci; Jill Johnson/jpistudios.com
Hello Again: Lane Davies (Fergus, GH) was reunited with Kate Mansi (Kristina) after a decades-long gap.
Lane Davies’s (Fergus, General Hospital) connection to Nancy Lee Grahn (Alexis) is well-established — the pair starred as fiery lovebirds Mason Capwell and Julia Wainwright on Santa Barbara back in the 1980s, and had a brief real-life love affair, as well, then re-teamed on GH in the early 2000s when Davies played Cameron Lewis opposite Grahn’s Alexis — but the actor has an off-screen connection to Kate Mansi (Kristina) that stretches back decades, as well.
“There’s another little soap opera!” Davies chuckles. “[My history with her] goes back more than 40 years,” before Mansi was born, “because I go back with her mom to almost 50 years now.” Davies first encountered Mansi’s mother, Victoria Morris, when he was a fledgling thespian and Morris, who is now a talent agent, was pursuing a dance career.
The actor explains, “We met in Providence [RI]; she was working in the box office and was a ballerina in Providence when I was a young buck in the acting company [at Trinity Square Repertory Company] with people like Richard Jenkins and Bruce McGill and Dan Von Vargen. It was a really good regional company, and that’s where Kate’s mother and I met. We were an item for several years and we came out to Los Angeles together.”
While Davies and Morris ultimately called it quits, the duo remained connected after their romance ended. “Kate’s mother and I, even after we split up, we were working together on a theater company in Ventura, CA, so I was around Kate and her sister when they were very little,” Davies shares. “But I went 30-something years without laying eyes on her.”
That is, until both Davies and Mansi attended the fundraiser Grahn mounted to support ALS research while the actor was in Los Angeles to shoot his short stint as Fergus. “It was great to see her,” Davies smiles. “I hadn’t seen her, literally, since she was in diapers.” And while he marvels at the small-world nature of Mansi winding up playing Grahn’s daughter — “and her name is Kate, and Nancy’s [real-life daughter] is Kate,” Davies adds — it didn’t entirely surprise him.
“There’s an old saying that there are only nine people in theater and we all know each other,” the actor grins. “And the longer I stay in the business, the more overlap I see. You start to wonder if you’re in the Twilight Zone or not!”
