On Friday night, General Hospital, led by Frank Valentini, executive producer, accomplished what only two other daytime dramas have ever done at the Daytime Emmys. GH took home the statuettes for Outstanding Writing Team, Outstanding Directing Team, and Outstanding Drama Series on the same night. Valentini spoke exclusively to Soap Hub backstage after the wins.
Fire and Ice Princess
Ryan’s Hope won Daytime Emmys for writing, directing, and show in 1979. Days of our Lives repeated this impressive feat in 2018. Now, it was GH’s turn to win three of the evening’s most prestigious award by submitting a mixture of a trio of memorable episodes from 2023. There was the climax of the Cassadine/Ice Princess caper, Anna’s (Finola Hughes) house burning down, and Epiphany’s (Sonya Eddy) memorial.
What helps make these GH episodes so special is Valentini adding little touches to the shows that aren’t so “little” — like Leslie Charleson making a surprise phone call appearance when Dr. Monica Quartermaine informed Elizabeth (Rebecca Herbst) that she was General Hospital’s new head nurse in the Epiphany memorial episode.
“This is four in a row for show, five in a row for directing,” Valentini told Soap Hub. Not only did voters give their support to GH, but so did Daytime Emmy winner Kelly Clarkson, host of The Kelly Clarkson Show, calling them a fun group of people. The inaugural American Idol champion gave a big shoutout to the ABC serial during her acceptance speech on Friday night’s show.
“I love that,” Valentini says about Clarkson’s enthusiasm for GH. “We are a fun group and we’re going to have a fun party. There you go.”
Soap Hub offered the exec a platform to acknowledge anyone that he may have forgotten to mention in his acceptance speech. “I’d just like to thank the longtime viewers for sticking with us for all this time,” Valentini says. “We feel the love. We may not get to see you or hear you, but we feel you.”
While it’s too early to say which shows might be selected for next year’s awards as we’re not even halfway through the year, Frank Valentini gives praise to his team for the recent episodes involving the death of Gregory Chase (Gregory Harrison).
The show in which Gregory’s mourners gathered together opened with scenes that were nearly dialogue-free, which set the tone for the episode’s poignancy. “They’ve been so good,” Valentini says of the shows. “How about that prologue? Nobody else is doing that.”
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