Erika Slezak got a warm welcome on the set of General Hospital from longtime friend and former One Life to Live costar Nancy Lee Grahn.
The two soap stars posed for a selfie that Grahn posted on Instagram on Thursday. And in the caption, she reminisced about Slezak sticking up for her during a tense time on One Life to Live.
As Grahn explained, she took a recurring, non-contract role on OLTL was her first job on television, and that role meant she was filming scenes as Beverly Wilkes as she was finishing school. “I had grown up watching OLTL with my mom and sister, so to be working with Judith Light [Karen Wolek], Gerald Anthony [Marco Dane], and Erika Slezak [Victoria Lord] was surreal and thrilling,” she said.
Four years later, Grahn still didn’t have a contract and was free to pursue other opportunities as long as she gave her OLTL bosses seven days of notice. So when she decided to move to Los Angeles — where she was screen-testing for a role in the 1981 NBC miniseries The Gangster Chronicles — she exercised that right. That’s when producer Joe Stuart took legal action, and Slezak took up her defense, Grahn wrote.
“[Stuart] sued me for leaving, even though I had every right to leave,” she recounted. “I was very young and intimidated by this threat and went to Erika for advice. Erika, without being asked to, went directly into her [boss’s] office and told him in no uncertain terms that what he was doing was unconscionable, mean, and unwarranted. She got right in the middle of a lawsuit and stood up for me, because she believed what her boss was doing to me was wrong and undeserved. She spoke up for me. That’s the kind of woman Erika is.”
Grahn also hailed Slezak as an “outstanding, consummate, well-awarded actress” who mentored her in “how to be truthful and effective” in the TV industry.
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“So, to meet up with her again after decades, still beautiful and elegant as always, was a true joy,” Grahn wrote. “It is no secret how much I respect and appreciate formidable, courageous women, and Erika is unquestionably one of them. BTW, My case was settled in arbitration, and I won.”
Now Slezak is joining Grahn on General Hospital, on which Grahn has been playing Alexis Davis since 1996. Slezak, a six-time Daytime Emmy winner, is debuting a new character in a short-term role on the ABC soap this fall. “She’s a class act and a powerhouse,” co-head writers Elizabeth Korte and Chris Van Etten previously raved in a preview of the GH action to come. “We can’t wait to see how her character challenges the status quo in Port Charles.”
General Hospital, Weekdays, ABC
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