Annie Wersching, courtesy of her official website.
Some interviews end up feeling more like good old fashioned girl talk. Speaking with Annie Wersching (Amelia Joffe) most definitely falls in this category. We talked for an hour the other day! In fact, I have so much good stuff to share with Soaps.com readers that I'm going to split it up into two articles. First, I'll tell you what I learned about Annie, the actor who IS Amelia and IS returning to General Hospital very soon. (In fact, she's already back from shooting her pilot, but her episodes don't start airing until May 11.)
When you read a person's bio and learn that they graduated with a degree in Fine Arts in Musical Theater, you can't help but be curious what their voice sounds like. Fortunately Annie's website has an audio link to a performance from the Pasadena Theatre so I could put my curiosity to rest. I was blown away by her voice. (Click on "Moon in My Window" in this link. Annie's is the first voice you hear: Annie Wersching's singing voice ). I'll wait until you come back…okay, isn't she amazing? If only still we had the Nurses' Ball (which I'll come back to because Annie and I had an interesting chat about that very topic.) In any case, Annie earned her degree in from Illinois University in 1999. She is originally from St. Louis and goes back there often to visit her mother, whom she is very close with. After graduating, she toured with a musical and became quite chummy with Gloria Loring from Days of Our Lives. Annie told me how funny life can be because she remembers Gloria telling her about life as a soap actor and "…how crazy it is learning all those lines every day." Well, by 2001 Annie moved to LA and here she is today learning all those lines every day!
Annie in "Cold Case" courtesy of her website.
ever since. Oddly enough, she has also tested for roles on All My Children and The Young and the Restless but never good hooked on those shows. (Okay, I'm not afraid to admit it, we've known all along that GH rules, right?)
Annie tells me that acting in a soap and appearing in a prime time show (she has been in Frasier, Cold Case, Boston Legal among others) is "crazy different". She enjoys player a character for a longer period of time -- much like she's used to in theater. "Soaps are a new world for me. There are SO many lines to learn," she goes on to say, "Soaps are putting me to the test. People have their pages hidden behind a pillow!" She explains that how the scenes transform from words on a page to the tape that we see on TV. "It's pretty intense how fast it moves. The night before I've crammed all those words in my brain. We block a bunch of scenes in a row, do one rehearsal and then one taping," she tells me. Then she laughs and says that they do another taping if "there's a really big mess up." She tells me that GH
has offered to take pity on her and will "thin out" her lines if she needs them to, but she proudly says that she hasn't had to take them up on it yet!
As for Amelia Joffe, Annie says that when she was away shooting a pilot (I'll tell you more about that in Part Two of my Annie interview) she realized that she is "defensive of her…protective of her." She explains that there was about a three-hour window of time in which she thought she wasn't going to get to return to the role of Amelia. Then it worked out that GH would use a temp for two weeks and Annie was thrilled. "I wanted to be around for the big reveal," she told me.
Next week I'll tell you want Annie said about working with Kelly Monaco, her chemistry with Stan Johnson, inside scoop on Bradford Anderson (Spinelli) and much more. And get this, she had no knowledge of the fan favorite from years gone by - the Nurse's Ball, so I filled her in! I'll tell you more about that chat, too. In any case, I hope you give Darby Stanchfield's Amelia Joffe the respect she deserves until Annie reprises her role on May 11. She has had some pretty big shoes to fill.
