Performer Of The Week
Cynthia Watros (NINA, GH)
■ Cynthia Watros led viewers on a fantastic voyage through Nina’s emotional landscape as the character reeled from the shock of her lifetime: Willow is her daughter.
As Carly wended her way to a confession, Watros played Nina as weary and wary, braced for another round of the same old shouting match. The tension increased in her body as Nina attempted to parse what Carly was trying to say. “Are you all right?” she queried incredulously when Carly first indicated that Nina and Willow were related, certain her rival was out of her gourd.
The more information Carly revealed, the more seriously Nina began taking her claims. Watros’s expressive eyes communicated the battle playing out inside Nina’s head — not knowing what to believe, not allowing herself to dare to believe. She was at the door, ready to walk away from Carly’s outlandish story, when Carly copped to running a DNA test that confirmed what she was saying. As the last of Nina’s doubts began to die, Carly reminded her of the urgency of the scenario (Willow was dying and needed a bone marrow donor), which jolted Nina enough out of her shock to begin to actually feel all of her competing emotions (anger, grief, joy, fear). They hit her all at once, knocking her off-balance. Struggling for breath, she staggered toward Carly, her anguish searing as she hissed, “You’re a monster.” Nina had more to say, none of it gentle, until finally, her voice quaking her fury, she roared, “Go to hell, you selfish bitch!”
Nina rushed to Willow’s hospital room and delivered the big news — and Willow dashed her hopes of a fresh start between them. Watros’s work here was as vulnerable and soft as she’d been ferocious and fierce a few scenes prior, and she played the most poignant moment — Nina suddenly realizing that Willow has her eyes, an observation she could barely get through sharing with Willow without bursting into sobs — to perfection.
There was a high degree of difficulty in what GH asked of Watros, and she more than delivered. Her electric, impassioned, deeply felt performance was nothing short of a triumph.