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CBS Soaps In Depth
November 15, 2005
Laura Wright (Cassie) bids a fond farewell to her GUIDING LIGHT family!
GUIDING LIGHT'S loss is GENERAL HOSPITAL'S gain. After winning popularity and daytime fame as Cassie Winslow, Laura Wright opted to leave her GL home after eight years, pack up her family and head west for a new adventure. "It was the hardest decision I've ever made in my entire life," she says. "Leaving a show that I love, a character that I love, was hard. But it was time for me to do something else. Eight years is a long time, and now it's someone else's turn to play Cassie."
Hard to Say Good-Bye
Wright's new role is Carly Corinthos on GH, which has been touted as an actress' dream part. She's the sassy, sexy mobster's ex-wife who's teetering between sanity and psychosis. Aware that time was running out on her GL contract, CBS brass contacted her to negotiate a new deal. She would have stayed, too. But since GH was already knocking at the door, she knew she had to walk through it.
"GL had approached me, but I wasn't returning phone calls because I wasn't going to play two people," says Wright. "Ethically, that's wrong. I'm not going to do that. So I waited. When I had to call [GL executive producer Ellen Wheeler] and tell her I was going to leave, it was tough. It was really tough."
It happened fast, and GL had to think even faster. "Ellen was disappointed for the show. It as a blow, not so much of losing Laura Wright, but there are a lot of characters they're losing at one time. And that was tough."
The Wright Move
Rumors had been circulating that there was a Cassie/Josh/Reva triangle in the works, which, if true, Wright regrets not being a part of. "That's the story I would have loved to play," says Wright. "I would have loved to work with Robert Newman and to go head to head with Kim Zimmer." Their responses to her leaving the GL nest are among her most unforgettable moments.
"I worked with Robert on my last day," Wright recalls. "He was sitting next to me, I put my head on his shoulder, and we started talking. He looked at me and said, 'It's time for you to go'." And she knew he was right.
While Newman's reaction was tender, Zimmer's generated a laugh. "Kim gave me the best response," grins Wright. "I was on the phone with her husband, AC [Weary], telling him and he goes, 'Well, she's not here.' And then all of a sudden he goes, 'Wait, here she is.' Kim walks in the door, and AC says, 'It's Laura.' Kim goes, 'You bitch!' A reporter called and told her."
After joking about how Zimmer and Newman, along with Grant Aleksander (ex-Phillip) and Michael O'Leary (Rick), had all left and returned to GL at one time or another, Zimmer told her pal, "I hope one day maybe we'll see you again. Maybe you'll come back like everybody else did."
--Rosemary Rossi, with reporting by Michelle Ann Moro
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