CHLOE LANIER VISITS GH
■ Chloe Lanier, whose Nelle was carted off to jail in August, returns to the show this week for a brief reprisal.
“Frank [Valentini, executive producer] actually told me on my last day at GH that I was going to be in a couple of epi- sodes filming in September,” reports the actress. “And I got really excited! I had told him, ‘I’m more than happy to recur, I just need more time to do other things,’ and I’m really happy that I got to come back.”
Though only two months had passed, Lanier was nervous about slipping back into Nelle’s shoes. “I was telling Josh [Swickard, Chase], ‘I have to, like, remember what I did!’ I had played this character for two years and I knew her like the back of my hand. But then, not doing it for two months, I felt like, ‘Oh, wait. I forgot pretty much everything.’ Mentally, it was a little overwhelming at first. Reading the script over and over again, I was like, ‘Oh, right, I remember who this girl is.’ But it wasn’t like muscle memory anymore.”
Lanier couldn’t wait to dive into her scripts. “I was totally curious to find out what I’d be doing, even though, obviously, Nelle’s in jail, so I knew my wardrobe options were probably limited! I was most excited to see who I was going to be working with, and I was overjoyed that I got to work with the people that I did.”
At the studio, the actress enjoyed many warm reunions. “Some friends from the show had come to my boyfriend’s birthday party, so I had seen Hayley [Erin, Kiki] and Josh recently, but it was so awesome to see James Patrick Stuart [Valentin], who I freaking love, and Chad [Duell, Michael] and Laura [Wright, Carly]; she and I have talked a lot since I left, but we hadn’t seen each other.” The big change she experienced? “Chad took over my dressing room; his name was already on my old door. But I got to use Genie Francis’s [Laura]; I felt special, for sure.”
Once she got in front of the cameras, “It ended up feeling really nice, really easy. It was a lot of fun — and I loved wearing that orange jumpsuit!” As for what brings Nelle back on the canvas, she teases, “She definitely has some unfinished business with some people ... and she may or may not run into her seed,” the baby Brad and Lucas are raising as Wiley.
Lanier says she would be “more than happy to come back and shake things up again. If we can work out the schedule, I would 100 percent be open to that.”
“I was overjoyed.”