Cynthia Watros Shares the Secret Behind Nina and Sonny’s Relationship!
Nina may be persona non grata with GENERAL HOSPITAL’s Sonny and Carly for her role in keeping “Mike” in Nixon Falls and away from his family in Port Charles. But don’t count her out just yet! Nina’s portrayer, Cynthia Watros, sat down with her GH leading man, Maurice Benard (Sonny), on his most recent State of Mind YouTube series, and the two Daytime Emmy winners chatted about the magic that is Nina and Mike — and what makes the couple’s relationship so perfectly imperfect!
Watros knew going into the storyline that it wasn’t going to be easy playing the character coming between a beloved soap supercouple like Sonny and Carly. “It’s challenging,” she confessed. “It was walking up a very steep mountain,” After all, she’d done exactly that as GUIDING LIGHT’s Annie, the nutty nurse who kept Josh and Reva apart. “So I know the ramifications of that. You can get pounded by the fans.”
There’s no doubt that Nina was wrong in keeping Mike from his family back in Port Charles, and not letting the guy know that she knew who he really was. But that was also what Watros loved about the couple’s connection, in a way. “Don’t hate me too much!” she begged of viewers watching the State of Mind episode. “But I love this storyline because Nina is not fully stable. I think what makes a character interesting is when you show their mental glitches. And she has a mental delusion, almost.”
Watros mused that Nina saw something in laid-back Mike that she never did in her previous interactions with tightly-wound Sonny — and that, in the actress’ opinion, was the secret ingredient to making the two characters click. “When you’re in relationships, that relationship brings out something in you. Then another relationship maybe brings out something ugly,” she explained. “When Sonny was with Nina, it brought out something [different in the character]. Maybe Sonny didn’t even know it was there.
“I love the complexity of it,” Watros continued of Sonny and Nina’s romance. “I love how it’s not neat and clean or perfect. It’s confusing. Because that’s how we are as people. It’s not all perfect. We all make mistakes. We all lie. Some are bigger, some are smaller. But it’s what you do then after the lie. Do you take responsibility? Do you say, ‘I’m sorry, I messed up.’”
In the end, the support Watros found in Benard as a scene partner helped ease her fears and make Nina and Sonny’s pairing a fun storyline to play. “You held me up,” she smiled. “It was your encouraging words and love and support, and us working really hard and just listening to each other. It’s exciting, and I’m grateful that I get to do it with you.”
Stay tuned to GH to see what happens next in the love triangle between Sonny, Nina, and Carly, and vote in our online poll to have your say on their complicated relationship!
