Kirsten Storms Opens Up About Maxie’s Appearance on GH
On a recent episode of Steve Burton and Bradford Anderson’s The Daily Drama podcast, Kirsten Storms (Maxie) sat down with her General Hospital co-stars for a chat that included reflecting upon her 18 years in Port Charles, and sharing how her alter ego has matured during that time. And in a brave moment of vulnerability, Storms told the hosts how a challenging time in her personal life — when she had brain surgery in 2021 — carried over into how she had been portraying her character on the soap.
Storms admitted that she was “so petrified” about her surgery to remove a beign cyst from the lower portion of her brain that she barely told anybody at work about her health issues. “I didn’t want to talk about it,” she confessed. “I didn’t know if I was going to live. That’s how I felt.”
Thankfully, Storms was fine physically following the two-month recovery period after her surgery, but the procedure took its toll on her mental health. “I didn’t bounce back from that mentally and emotionally as quick as I would want to,” she noted. “And I feel like how I felt personally was reflected in Maxie in the show.”
During that period, Storms faced a slew of criticism from viewers about her physical appearance, and therefore how Maxie — who was long known as one of Port Charles’ trendiest characters — looked on screen. “I would constantly get messages about how they didn’t like the way I was dressing. But like, I was only comfortable in those clothes because I was not comfortable with myself,” she revealed. “And I didn’t have the desire to change that for myself for some reason.”
Next month will mark the third anniversary of her surgery, and Storms has recently turned a corner in her mental health. “Now, I’m starting to feel a little bit more like myself as I’m learning to take better care of me. And at work, I’m dressing in more fashionable outfits. I’m more into making sure my makeup goes with it,” pointed out the GH star, who typically does her own makeup for work. “I have a really different, cool hairstyle. All the old school Maxie stuff.”
Adding that the Spixie reunion between her character and Anderson’s Spinelli was another positive, Storms suggested, “It does feel like we’re where we were, but older now.
“Maybe we could just like not fully remember Maxie over the last couple of years,” the actress concluded with a laugh, “and we could just jump from Spixie to now. But that is the growth.”
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