GH COMEBACK FOR JESSICA TUCK
■ “She’s like a cockroach, right?” muses Jessica Tuck of her sinister
GH alter ego, Cassandra Pierce, who returns to Port Charles this week. “I mean, you can stab her with a hypodermic needle full of opioids and you can’t kill her!
She’s like those candles you try to blow out at birthday parties. She just keeps re-lighting.”
Though she’s amassed a prolific prime-time resumé since her
1988-92 run as ONE LIFE TO
LIVE’S Megan, Tuck says that she welcomes the chance to reconnect with her daytime roots. “I have a long history with soaps,” she notes. “It’s where I started. I love the immediacy of it. It’s really fun. I love the people there. And it’s work, which I absolutely never take for granted.”
Tuck debuted on GH in 2017 and has popped up annually. “I’m happy to be back,” she says. “I was surprised to get the call. I dipped back for two seconds when I came out of my coma or whatever, but I’d been away for a while. She’s been busy, but off camera! If they don’t kill you on camera, there is always a possibility of a return. I always welcome it when they call. Now it’s starting to feel more familiar. I’ve got the routine down and everyone is incredibly nice — hair and makeup and wardrobe and the cast and the crew.”
Cassandra reappeared in August, when she injected Sasha’s grapefruit with a strong strain of avian flu. “She’s not a very nice character,” Tuck grins. “She’s a fun character to play, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that she is well-behaved!” For the actress, the day was a whirlwind. “You’re in, you’re up, you’re out of the building. So I didn’t really see anyone that I’d worked with before.”
This time around, though, she got to share scenes with Genie Francis (Laura), much to her delight. “I loved that! That was just so much fun. I found out [I’d be working with her] when I opened the script. I was like, ‘Woo-hoo! Hot diggity!’ I mean, like so many people, I have been such a fan of hers forever and ever and ever. It was really fun to meet the person behind the character I’ve gotten to know. So like any fan out there that would be sort of excited about meeting someone they have been interested in and invested in, it was fun for me, too.” It was actually not the first time they had met. “In the 1980s, in my waitressing days, I had waited on her on the Upper West Side. I remember that she sat down in my station and I served her and she was really nice. And once again, she could not have been nicer. Really professional and really nice and it was a really fun day.”