ROLE: Cassie Layne, Guiding Light

A/K/A: She played Ally Rescott on Loving and The City.

BIRTHDAY: September 11

MAIDEN NAME: Sisk

HAILS FROM: Maryland

MR. "WRIGHT": She's wed to architect John Wright.

FUN FACT: Kelly Ripa (Hayley,All My Children) was a bridesmaid at her wedding.

When The City went off the air in March, 1997, Laura Wright was spent. For the previous six years, she had played ingenue and often victim Ally Rescott, first on Loving, then on its so-so SoHo spin-off. The City's film-like shooting schedule, coupled with Wright's prominent role on the show, was, needless to say, exhausting. Moreover, except for Randolph Mantooth (ex-Alex), Wright was the senior-most member of the cast, cementing her status as chief spokesperson and press favorite. And she accepted the position gladly. Wright was (and still is) the kind of daytime actor who actually watches her soap. (One time, one of The City's producers, uncertain of a past storyline, told a Soap Opera Digest reporter to double check with Wright about it.) She's also the kind of star who, when a desperate editor needs quotes for a story on deadline or a gossip item or what have you, she's there in an instant.

For her efforts, Wright has earned a good reputation in daytime. Therefore, it wasn't too surprising when Guiding Light snapped Wright up last year, especially since GL's head writers Barbara Esensten and James H. Brown are the former head scribes of The City. As Cassie Layne, Reva's (Kim Zimmer) long lost sister, Wright bore no resemblance to trendy, downtown Ally, with her slick SoHo clothes and perfectly coifed hair. Nope, Cassie, a former stripper, came aboard wearing jeans and skimpy tops. On a soap set littered with multiple Emmy winners (think Zimmer, Deas, ver Dorn), she quickly proved she could hold her own. In February 1998, Wright won a Soap Opera Digest Award for her portrayal of daytime's Favorite New Character. Shortly afterwards, the actress found out that she was pregnant with her first child.

DIGEST ONLINE: You're eight months pregnant now, so how are you feeling?

LAURA WRIGHT: Tired. I'm working every day, so I'm pretty exhausted but I'm grateful to be working and grateful this hasn't in any way hurt my storyline.

DIGEST ONLINE: As the big day approaches, is this time in your life a bit... nerve-wracking?

WRIGHT: No. The only hard thing is that I'm working so much, other than that everything is fine. I'm just having to sleep a lot more. I try [to sleep a bit at the studio], but it's tough... I have an apartment here [in Manhattan because my husband and my home are out in Pennsylvania... it's an hour-and-a-half commute]. If I work four days in a row, I stay in the city four days in the row. It's not physically possible for me to make the commute back and forth these days.

DIGEST ONLINE: You must be pleased that the soap wrote in your pregnancy.

WRIGHT: I would have been a lot happier if it had been written in three months ago or five months ago. At this point, the pregnancy is written in but they are still shooting me from the chest up [to hide my real-life pregnancy]. It doesn't really help me in the sense of giving me freedom from worrying if my stomach is showing. It's kind of a little strange.

DIGEST ONLINE: What is the show planning to do about Cassie's pregnancy? Obviously, she will be pregnant long after you in real life have given birth next month?

WRIGHT: Well, not necessarily. See now, the show hasn't decided or committed to how pregnant Cassie is. There are definitely four or five girls I know of [in my life] who didn't realize they were pregnant until three or four months into their pregnancy. It's not uncommon. It's happened. It's realistic. I had one girlfriend who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant before she found out. You hear weird stories, but with all the stuff going on with the clone and Reva's sister's coming back and Dinah almost finding out and having to hide Sean, I think it's very easily possible for Cassie to be three or four months pregnant. At least, three and not really realize it. And you also have your handful of women who continue to have their period up until they're five months pregnant, so it's not stretching at all to say.... When Cassie found out in July, she could have been three months pregnant and by December, she could be eight months pregnant.

DIGEST ONLINE: But the show's time is a little puzzling.

WRIGHT: It makes no sense; why would they make me pregnant [now]? I'm [eight] months pregnant [in real life]. Therefore, you can't write in me looking pregnant until I come back from maternity leave. What the hell does that do for me? It's certainly possible. I'm hoping that's what they do, because I really don't want to come back and be pregnant for a whole long while.

DIGEST ONLINE: How do you think Cassie feels about being pregnant?

WRIGHT: Well, I think she feels the timing really sucks. It's just bad timing all the way around. It only gets worse. I don't think she's unhappy about being pregnant with Hart's child, I think she feels it's just not the right time.

DIGEST ONLINE: Obviously, Cassie is in love with Hart, but is he the love of her life?

WRIGHT: He's the only good guy she has ever known. She was married to [loser] Rob, then stripped and was living this rough life in Chicago, and now there's this nice guy -- Hart -- who is handsome and rich on top of it. But he does the right thing. He does things he knows he should do; he has morals and standards and ethics. All these things that are so foreign to Cassie. But it is a soap opera; for the time being, sure, she feels he's the love of her life, but next week it could be someone else. It's hard to commit to that, because I know the way daytime goes. In daytime, I don't think you can say anyone's the love of someone's life... unless they're like Josh and Reva. I don't foresee that being the case.

DIGEST ONLINE: Cassie's feelings for Sean are platonic... for now?

WRIGHT: At this point in time. Like I say, anything is possible. Sean annoys her because he's the voice of truth right now. He'll say, "Hart's helping Dinah, so what about you? Dump him." As if, why Cassie are you involved in this at all? He's the voice of truth. You never want to hear the truth, so Sean drives her crazy.

DIGEST ONLINE: But Sean seems to be good for Cassie. Has it ever been established that Cassie is near the brink of walking away from the Hart relationship because Dinah is just too much trouble?

WRIGHT: I personally think that Cassie, in a second, would think, "Oh, forget about it. I'm outta here." The character who walked on a year ago would have been put in this situation and then been a lot more confrontational with Hart, not necessarily with Dinah. She would have been a lot more like, "If you want her, you can have her. See ya."

When [Hart] said to her a couple of weeks ago, "Yeah, I want [Dinah's] baby to be mine. I'm looking forward to it." I would have been like, "I'm out the door." I personally think that Cassie would have made it a lot more harder on Hart. He's gotten off way too easy.

DIGEST ONLINE: How do you think Cassie will handle the baby to come?

WRIGHT: Most likely how she's going to handle it, by going off on her own -- I'm sure that Cassie will go off and have the baby alone, because the show has to get me off for six weeks maternity leave. [Laughs] That's total speculation, but I know I have to leave town somehow.

DIGEST ONLINE: The fact that she's kept her pregnancy to herself so long makes the story much more compelling and Cassie a stronger character.

WRIGHT: I like the fact that she's not telling Hart that it's his baby. She ends up telling Hart that it's not his, because it comes out that [Cassie's] pregnant. I like that. I don't want her to be all whiny to him. Cassie should make a decision and stick with it. That's interesting. That's what people want to watch. People don't want to see me blubbering all the time. I don't think that is the character.

DIGEST ONLINE: One thing we've noticed about you is that you do seem to have great chemistry with Italian-American actors: first George Palermo [Tony, The City] and now Frank Grillo [Hart].

WRIGHT: [Laughs] It's funny, but I saw no chemistry between me and George. Everyone would say, "You guys are so great together." I was always saying, "Are you serious?" Now I believed Ally with Casey [played by Paul Anthony Stewart], that relationship I believed. There was a beginning to it.

It's really hard in this [current] situation because I think Hart and Cassie were thrown together so quickly. We've had lines that [Frank Grillo and I] actually had to cut out of scripts. [Lines such as], "We've been through so much together." No, we haven't. We haven't been through anything together. We've been through nothing. Hart and Dinah have -- there's the relationship. Maybe this is where you can start making something out of the Hart and Cassie thing. You know, maybe you'll want them to be together because they are not going to be. You give the audience what they want and then who cares then. I guess I don't find great chemistry with Frank -- although we're great friends -- but watching the show, I'm thinking, "Where's their history? Where's their dying need to be together? Why do we have to be together? What is it about Cassie that made you dump the love of your life, the woman you were going to marry and have kids with?" That's what I'm thinking. I don't think it's truly been justified.

DIGEST ONLINE: I see what you're saying: Cassie doesn't have that history and kinship with Hart, just like Ally and Tony didn't have much together in their past.

WRIGHT: I personally love the Ben and Beth relationship on our show. That's who I want to be together.

DIGEST ONLINE: Well, Ben practically saved Beth's life.

WRIGHT: And you don't compromise his a--... his character. Ben's still a jerk, yet he can still be a jerk and be a friend to her. That's what I think is really cool.

DIGEST ONLINE: Beth Chamberlin [Beth] told me she and Hunt Block [Ben] have a nice rapport off-camera, often joking around. What is your off-screen relationship with Frank Grillo like?

WRIGHT: We were fine right away, because we were immediately thrown into working together. The first time we had to really work together, I [as Cassie] was stripping at a club and [Hart] pulls me off the table and takes me home. We had to totally work together big time. I have a great time working with Frank and Wendy Moniz [Dinah]. She's just a fabulous actress. I have a great time working with Frank. It's just that I guess I don't see the sparks between the two characters because I think [their relationship] should have built a little longer. It's hard to play things now when [their romance] is missing a chunk of the dying need to be inseparable. But whatever.

DIGEST ONLINE: Switching gears a bit, Guiding Light is a child friendly set and baby-inundated courtesy of Fiona Hutchison [Jenna] and Elizabeth Keifer [Blake] and Frank, too. Did that figure into your decision to have a baby of your own?

WRIGHT: No. I was already pregnant before Fiona or Liz's babies were born. My sister just had a baby in February. That probably had more of an influence on me than the people I work with. [My nephew's] this wonderful baby. I just wanted to take him home with me. I guess it got me thinking.

I've wanted a baby for a while. John and I were going to try to have a baby last fall, but I just started on Guiding Light. I thought, "I can't do that. I have to establish this character." Then we did a lot more thinking about it over the holidays last year, around Christmas time. We waited until after the first of the year, and the first time we tried, we nailed it. [Laughs]

DIGEST ONLINE: That's great. I hear it often takes a few tries, at the least.

WRIGHT: You have to really know down to within the three or four days of your cycle. And I did.

DIGEST ONLINE: So where were you when you found out you were pregnant?

WRIGHT: I was at my apartment in New York.

DIGEST ONLINE: Did you hear it from your doctor or did you buy one of those pregnancy tests from the pharmacy?

WRIGHT: I took three! It was March 10. I was on my way out to a little party that [GL Executive Producer] Paul Rauch was throwing for just the cast to congratulate [GL] on being re-signed for another three years to CBS. As I was getting ready to leave, I thought, "Aah, I'll just take the test now." Of course, when I found out, I didn't want to go anywhere because my husband couldn't come with me. I didn't want to leave him. I was just pregnant -- like four weeks.

DIGEST ONLINE: How did you tell John?

WRIGHT: I just walked up with the stick in my hand and said, "Oh, my God, we're pregnant!" We were so expecting to see it not positive. I don't think we even considered it as a possibility.

DIGEST ONLINE: Have you outfitted your dressing room with baby paraphernalia?

WRIGHT: The baby will be with me every day here. I'll have to get the necessities.

DIGEST ONLINE: Have any of your co-stars given you any good baby or parenting tips?

WRIGHT: Fiona and Beth [Ehlers, Harley] both tell me, "It's your baby. Every pregnancy is different. No one can tell you what to do. Feel it out and do what feels right."

DIGEST ONLINE: What have you learned from Kim Zimmer [Reva] about acting and daytime in general?

WRIGHT: Well, she has her way of doings things as do I. Kim's great and everything, but so are Maeve Kinkead [Vanessa] and Maureen Garrett [Holly]. Everyone has their own thing and something to bring to the table. I admire Kim's work, she's a fabulous, strong actress. I guess at this point, I don't know what I've learned from her.

DIGEST ONLINE: What attracted you about joining the cast of GL?

WRIGHT: Everyone said that Guiding Light was an actor's show. I always said, "If there was ever a show I would want to go on after I left The City, it would be Guiding Light." As I understood it, it was a great place for actors to work.

DIGEST ONLINE: I heard from some that The City was a real grind. At times, you were filming three shows a day or more.

WRIGHT: It was hard, but it was a great experience. The hours are longer at Guiding Light. I could go into work at 7 a.m. on The City and be done by 11 a.m. I come into [GL] at 7 a.m. and I'm going to be here until 7:30 tonight. [The City] was stressful and difficult because it was so quickly paced, and there was so much other crap going on that it was not about the acting or the dialogue. There was no time to say, "I have a problem with this." It was all so rushed that there was no time for mistakes. You would tape so out of order that the continuity would be screwed up. But the flipside is that it was a wonderful experience. Everyone from production to the actors to wardrobe to hair and make-up worked their tails off. On one hand, it was utterly exhausting and frustrating to work there, but on the other hand, it was a such a great experience and fun.

DIGEST ONLINE: When Loving morphed into The City, did you miss Loving?

WRIGHT: I missed Loving horribly and I missed all the people [in the cast]. I missed the relationships on-screen that my character had built and the ones I had built off-camera. When The City was canceled, I wasn't really upset except for that I was going to miss the crew because they were there through Loving. Loving was like my family. I grew up there. Nada Rowand [ex-Kate Rescott], Lisa Peluso [ex-Ava; Lila, Another World], Christine Tudor Newman [ex-Gwyneth Alden] ... a fabulous group of people.

DIGEST ONLINE: Do you keep in touch with anybody from The City?

WRIGHT: I talked to T.W. King [ex-Danny] a while ago, and Amy Van Horne [ex-Carla] and I are playing telephone tag. I bumped into Paul Anthony Stewart not too long ago. You try to keep in touch, but it is kind of tough.

DIGEST ONLINE: What was your favorite storyline during you Loving/City years?

WRIGHT: I had two. I loved working with Paul and Michael Weatherly [Cooper], that whole story with Cooper's baby. [Cooper] wanted to marry Ally, [so he] made Casey lie and tell Ally that he didn't love her. Then [Casey] faked making love to Steffi so Ally would leave him and Cooper could have Ally. Michael could just make you laugh all the time. I also loved the Casey dying stuff. Pretty heart wrenching, but wonderful stuff to play.

DIGEST ONLINE: And to watch. My last question is, if you could have your way, what would you like to see ahead for Cassie?

[There's a knock on Wright's dressing room door.]

KIM ZIMMER [to Wright]: You naked?

WRIGHT: [Laughs] No. You want to run lines?

ZIMMER: Yeah.

WRIGHT: I'll be right there... We've got to run lines because we're up next...

I just want [Cassie] to keep her strength. I just don't want her to lose it. I want her to stay the cool, fun character she is. I love the fact that I get to punch people in the face and be totally justified. I love the fact that I beat the sh-- out of Dinah's car with a crowbar. That's just so fun. I hate when I'm put in business clothes. Tell the fans to write in: Keep Cassie in leather jackets and tight blue jeans. That's how she came on the show. Not every character should be dressed to the nines. How do you distinguish the characters from one another? And I don't always want her to be good. I want her to lie and be bad because that's what humans do.