For months, General Hospital’s Nina Reeves kept fan-favorite Sonny Corinthos from his family, lady-love Carly Corinthos, and the mob life. Now that Sonny has regained his memory and is back in Port Charles, Nina’s life is spiraling out of control but Cynthia Watros, her portrayer, is sitting pretty on Maurice Benard’s State of Mind YouTube video podcast and ready to share!
One of the things that Benard likes about Watros is that she is a good listener. A good friend. He wanted to take a moment on the show to learn more about her. Where did she grow up? When did she know she wanted to be an actress?
“I grew up in Michigan,” she revealed, pulling back a layer of mystery to remember her childhood. “In Lake Orion, it’s about 45 minutes from Detroit. A small, small town.”
He was genuinely surprised and admitted that he thought she might have been a cheerleader. “I got really sick. I had this thing called Thrombocypotenia, which is a platelet disorder, a blood disease basically.” The actress continued, “So, I was in and out of hospitals for two years. I had chemo…wow, this goes deep quickly. I was like this bald, puffy kid in school. It was a really difficult time.”
Her lightbulb moment began after high school. “I went to Community College because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I didn’t do well in school. Homelife was a little rocky because my parents were not around.” She described the moment when her life changed, “I saw a poster on the wall about auditions. I thought I would meet people. It was the first time that I thought I was really good at something.”
A teacher convinced her to continue her studies at Boston University. “I loved everything about it. I loved just sitting and watching people act. Do you know how you had to watch the same thing over and over? I loved that.” Later, she made the move to New York where life wasn’t easy.
“I was struggling. For the first year, it was just bad. I got restaurant jobs and stuff like that. Then I went to Guiding Light. Kept going back, and back, and back, and finally landed a job which was probably the best thing. Soaps are amazing because they teach you not only to make decisions really quickly, to memorize really quickly, to make choices really quickly but I also learned about lighting,” she added, “and meeting your mark.”
Benard teased his castmate about her Daytime Emmy win. “I have had three people say that your Emmy reel from Guiding Light was the best thing that they have ever seen,” Benard mentioned. “Something about a courtroom.” Watros laughed, “Yes, there was a lot of crying, I was taking a lot of drugs [in the storyline], and then I won an Emmy. Thank you very much.”
The duo tackled a big role from her repertoire and the fallout. “I was in New York and I did Guiding Light and then I was like, ‘I want to go to LA!’” Watros laid the groundwork for her role on ABC’s LOST, “I made the heartwrenching decision, it was so hard to leave, it was so hard to leave Annie Dutton, the character I played. So I got an audition and then I got the part which was such a shocker. And they said, ‘go to Hawaii within a week,’ and I had never even visited there.
“Then I moved there. I had these two little babies. I have twins. They were toddlers. Go there, get a place, I am on the show.” She described the “island” experience, “Most of the things are exterior so I would just dream about a soundstage, just dream about being inside with a coffee machine and be like – remember those days? Being outside, at night, with the rain machine, and being so cold, and so wet. It was probably one of the hardest jobs that I have ever had. I loved the job but it was challenging.”
The biggest challenge happened after the filming ended. “We would all get together to watch the show and I probably had one too many drinks and got arrested for a DUI. It is unfortunate. You know we all make mistakes. You learn and you go, ‘I wish I had done something better.’ But I definitely learned from it and that is all you can take from mistakes.”
SPOILER ALERT [if you haven’t seen LOST]: “My character Libby got shot and died,” Watros confided. “Who knows if that would have happened to the character with or without that DUI. It was definitely not one of the stellar moments of my life.”
The two General Hospital co-stars covered a lot of ground during the show including her grandmother’s struggles with mental illness, her twin girls’ struggle in college during the pandemic, going to college with GH co-star Maura West (Ava Jerome Cassadine), Watros’s comedy niche, and a little astrology is thrown in for good measure. But die-hard GH fans are not going to want to miss the conversation about Sonny and Carly versus Mike and Nina. Don’t miss a minute of their exchange! You can also watch a preview below.
Maurice’s State of Mind is rapidly approaching 50,000 subscribers on YouTube for State of Mind. To see what all the buzz is about check out his channel. Follow Cynthia Watros on Twitter @watroswatros, and Instagram @watros.watros.
General Hospital (GH) airs weekdays on ABC. Check your local listings for airtimes. For more about what’s coming up in Port Charles, check out all the latest that’s been posted on GH spoilers, and for an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.
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