Amber Tamblyn Opens up About Returning to the GH Studio
When Amber Tamblyn was just 10 years old, she went on an audition for the role of Emily Bowen Quartermaine on GENERAL HOSPITAL, and what was supposed to be a short recurring role soon turned into a seven-year run on the soap. “So when, at the end of 2023 — more than two decades after I had left the show to pursue other acting opportunities — [casting director] Mark Teschner E-mailed me to see if I wanted to be a part of the 60th anniversary special celebrating the show’s legacy, the answer was a resounding yes,” the actress declared in an essay she wrote about the experience.
“When I entered the GH building at the end of last year,” she wrote, “I ran into so many actors and old friends I hadn’t seen in years and was reminded of the ones who had passed away – their smiling faces on the posters that lined the hallways.”
After meeting up with Teschner, who took her to meet current executive producer Frank Valentini, Tamblyn went to the hair and makeup room which she found looked just as she remembered it from decades ago.
“From there, Mark and I went up to the stage, my old stomping ground, and I watched a Christmas scene being shot with Genie Francis (Laura), Maurice Benard (Sonny), Rebecca Herbst (Liz), and Jon Lindstrom (Kevin), all of whom I had known so well so long ago,” Tamblyn recalled. “Even the stage manager, Craig McManus, was still there wearing his classic denim jeans and big, joyous smile. I hugged and talked with each of them, and it felt like not a day had gone by since I had last been there.”
After that scene finished, it was time for Tamblyn to tape her segment for the GH anniversary primetime special, 60 YEARS OF STARS AND STORYTELLING, and walking through the doors of the hospital onto the set sent the memories flooding back. “This wonderful place — this specific television set where my TV dad and mom played the head doctors of this particular TV hospital — carried so many good memories for me in a business that often created bad ones, especially for younger performers,” she explained. “Becky Herbst stood to the right of the camera, and I could feel her smiling in my periphery in the way only a big sister could.
“As I pulled my car off the ABC lot at the end of the day,” Tamblyn concluded her essay, “I was overwhelmed with a sense of love and gratitude and a pride in my work and my part in the legacy of the show and all that I’ve been able to accomplish so far in my life… ‘How lucky am I?’ I’ve thought since then, ‘To live this wildly creative, unique life that contains multitudes: to love how far I’ve come and love even more the experience of returning to where I came from.”
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