GH: Sean Donely Dies
■ In the lead-up to the show’s big tribute to the beloved Sean Donely, a Port Charles resident from 198495, his loved ones get the sad news that their friend has died.
Anna is the first to find out. “She gets a phone call from the WSB about Sean’s passing,” begins Executive Producer Frank Valentini. Picks up Finola Hughes (Anna), “She’s with Maxie,” Sean’s goddaughter, “when she finds out. To hear this news affected Anna the same way it affected me to hear about [the death of John Reilly, ex-sean]. It was good that I was working with Kirsten [Storms, Maxie], because you know, you want to be with a friend in that moment. It is, of course, a crushing blow for Anna.”
Anna is tasked with alerting other people in Sean’s life of his passing. “She has to share the news with the people that she knows and loves and is close to,” Valentini details. “So we see her share with Scorpio, which is very moving, as well. Obviously, everyone is devastated.”
The Donely family invites his old pals to attend his funeral in Ireland, but Anna is reluctant to go because of Chase’s dicey situation — as fans know, he’s been poisoned by Peter, who is holding the antidote hostage in order to get Anna to do his bidding, in a callback to a scheme Faison once perpetrated against Sean; in 1991, Faison poisoned Sean’s wife, Tiffany, and dangled the cure as a means of coercing Sean into providing him with details of Scorpio’s investigation into his criminal activities. Notes Valentini, “The Anna/ Peter/finn/chase story sort of lent itself to jumping off and leading into the passing of Sean Donely, and we sort of tied that in together and took a little bit of time within the current storyline to sort of reacquaint the audience with who he was and what that means.” Elaborates Co-head Writer Chris Van Etten, “To some degree, there was a little bit of luck in terms of what was going on on the show. It made sense, given Peter’s relationship with Faison, and the things that Faison had done in the past, that he would take a page from his dastardly father’s book. So, we had [that] story unfolding that was a nod to a story that Sean was involved in, and I think it helped give context to the contribution Sean made to the show.”
In the end, Finn convinces his ex to attend the memorial for Sean, and in turn, she asks Valentin to handle things on the Peter/chase front in her absence. With that important business taken care of, she joins the other characters in heading out of the country to honor her friend. “They all travel together to attend his funeral,” Valentini says. For more, see page 30.