General Hospital’s Laura Wright Gets Painfully Honest About the Co-Star She Fell ‘Madly In Love With’

And no, it’s not who you think!

Ah, love. It can strike at the strangest of times, in the most unexpected of places. That’s something General Hospital’s Laura Wright knows — though we suppose falling in love at work isn’t all that unusual. Heck, if The Office is anything to go off of, the workplace is pretty much the only place people find love!

Yes, Wright said, she had fallen in love with a co-worker before — a couple times, she admitted during a special episode of Maurice Benard’s State of Mind — though she’s not talking about her beau, Wes Ramsey (ex-Peter)!

They weren’t actually co-stars when they fell in love. He joined General Hospital after they were together and, she pointed out to Benard, she “knew him way before. I worked with him on Guiding Light when I was pregnant with my son!”

There was no romance then, just acting peers. However, that’s not quite how Wright’s first soap went back when she was single — and very much not pregnant!

“My co-star on Loving,” she recalled, “I was madly in love with. Paul Anthony Stewart. Incredible actor.”

This was back when Ally and Casey were steaming up the screen together, so naturally the two were spending lots of time together. And Wright was, apparently, hoping that their onscreen love story might bleed out into real life — despite her other co-stars’ warnings that it would not happen!

“Everyone was like, ‘He’s gay,’” she laughed of her obliviousness. “And I was like, ‘No, he’s not! He likes me! Whatever.’ So for like two years, I was like, ‘Hiiii!’ And finally he’s like, ‘It’s really not gonna happen.’”

Heck, can ya blame her?

Credit: Disney General Entertainment via Getty Images

Well, not everything works out, we supposed. Though the question is, was she in love with her leading man, or his character? That’s something she had to figure out for herself a few years later after she hopped over to Guiding Light to play Cassie.

Over there, she admitted, “I was just madly in love with Bradley Cole, who played Prince Richard.”

At least, that’s what she thought at the time. But then she started putting some pieces together and realized that’s not actually what was happening.

“I realized every time we’d be at an event afterwards,” she explained, “we didn’t really hang out or talk. And I was like, ‘Oh, I’m actually madly in love with Richard.’ I was really in love with the character and caught up in the storyline!”

Wow, it’s good to know the fans aren’t the only ones who fall in love with characters and their stories! Though when Wright explained it, it’s kind of surprising that love doesn’t bloom between co-stars all the time.

“I was there from seven in the morning to seven at night,” she explained. “I spent more time with that person, running lines and doing scenes onset, than I spent with my family. And all you’re wearing are beautiful clothes and having this person tell me how amazing I am and how I’m beautiful.”

He was an actual prince. Who wasn’t in love with Richard?

Credit: CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection

More: What had Chad Duell so horrified? 

Real life just can’t compare to soap opera life. And neither can real romance. She laughed that at the end of the day, she’d go home to her family and her husband and be forced back to reality as he’d ask things like, “‘Did you hear the dog s*** in the backyard?’ And I’m like, ‘What about how amazing and beautiful I am?!’ And the kid’s crying and dinner’s all over the table.”

In the end, she said, “It’s easy to get caught up in the romance that’s not real and I do understand how it can happen.”

“But not on General Hospital in 17 years,” she concluded, turning to Benard with a laugh. “Sorry, baby.”

Sonny’s portrayer feigned shock. “How can that not happen?”

How, indeed!

Take a look at our photo gallery of 15 defining moments of Wright’s Carly Corinthos.