GENERAL HOSPITAL’s Kathleen Gati Thanks Anthony Geary
This past August marked Kathleen Gati’s 10th anniversary playing GENERAL HOSPITAL’s Liesl Obrecht. In an interview with Soaps.com dishing about her decade in Port Charles, Gati shared her excitement for the career milestone, especially since playing Dr. Obrecht was only supposed to be a two-day job. Until, she explained, GH icon Anthony Geary (ex-Luke) got involved!
As the story goes, Gati taped two episodes of the soap opera, had loads of fun, and then more or less put it out of her mind as she went on to her next project. A short time later, she was in Vancouver working on the first season of The CW superhero drama ARROW when she received a phone call that GH wanted her back for more episodes. And according to the buzz around the studio, her return to the Port Charles canvas had a lot to do with a glowing recommendation from Geary, her previous scene partner. “From what I believe and understand… from what I have been told, that’s exactly what happened,” Gati confessed.
Gati made her GH debut on August 24, 2012, as a psychiatrist at a Swiss sanitarium Luke visited looking for Anna, who was there searching for her presumed-dead daughter, Robin. Posing as Dr. Von Schemerman, Luke questioned Dr. Obrecht about “his” patient, and an off-camera rapport was born between Gati and Geary in between scenes. “We had so much fun, making fun of the names, of the accents, he said, ‘Who are you?’” recalled the actress. “We were having such a good time working together and he said, ‘You seem so calm.’ And I said ‘Oh, maybe on the outside but on the inside it’s like a chicken with its head cut off.’ And he said, ‘Me too.’”
Calling Geary “a wonderful actor to work with,” Gati continued, she felt as if they “bonded really well” during their scenes. “From what I understand,” she added, “he went to [executive producer] Frank Valentini and said, ‘Pay attention to this girl. Keep her around.’”
At the end of Gati’s second episode, it was revealed that the evil doctor was not only holding Robin captive at the clinic but Duke Lavery as well. And while that could have been the end of Dr. Obrecht, once the actress returned to the soap for her expanded role, the character was tied to Cesar Faison as his partner in crime — and the two were actually Britt’s parents! “They kept developing her and developing her,” Gati concluded with a smile, seemingly unable to believe that 10 years have gone by. “It’s a really satisfying role.”
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