It has been almost two years since the calculating she-devil, Esme Prince, landed in Port Charles, but the actress that portrays her wouldn’t change a minute of it her time on General Hospital. Avery Kristen Pohl revealed why her bad girl role is such a gift.
Avery Kristen Pohl: Counts Herself Lucky
Pohl joined the cast in August of 2021, as the conniving girlfriend of Spencer Cassadine (Nicholas Alexander Chavez). She was later revealed to be the spawn of the evil Ryan Chamberlin (Jon Lindstrom) and crazy Heather Webber (Alley Mills). Pohl fielded fan questions during a Coastal Entertainment Zoom Event about her wild ride.
Unwinding Avery Kristen Pohl Style
First up, a fan asked how she decompressed from an intense work week. “To be completely honest, I’d been asked this question before and I never truly understood what people meant. I sort of go back and relax after a long work day because I love what I do.” Pohl added, “I think it’s really a blessing to be able to get to go play, pretend for a living.”
The actress acknowledged that it could be exhausting at times. “It wasn’t until this last week actually that I truly understood why people ask that question,” she explained. “We had some intense stuff this week and I think this was the first time I had a hard time separating what was going on in Esme’s world versus mine. So, you know, I honestly turned to food.”
She shared her go-to comfort cuisine. “I don’t know if that’s a good habit or not and I would leave that and be like, you know what, I want some pizza or I want a cup of ice cream at this point.”
GH: Balancing Out
Pohl tries to find a healthy life/work balance. “I go and I leave work and I go home and do school. So, it’s constantly like a busy lifestyle, but I wouldn’t really change it.”
Now that her character has amnesia and is a new mother, the workload has lightened up. “I think that there are some days where you get to go in and you know, it’s, it’s lighter work that day. So you feel like, oh yeah, this is great. I’m gonna hop in, have a cup of wine and I’m gonna go home.”
That doesn’t mean that Esme’s life still doesn’t have a lot of drama. “Then there’s other days where, you know, you’re there all day and you know, you’re sobbing half the day or the whole day — you never really know,” she answered honestly. “And, those get a little harder I think to keep up with emotionally because you’re trying to get 100% in every scene.”
Pohl took a philosophical approach to how she handled the heavy emotional scenes. “I think when you get to a point where you have 20 scenes in a day for the third day in a row, it gets a little difficult to do,” she stated. “It’s really just finding pacing and, in one way, being comfortable enough to share as much as you can share, but also not getting too comfortable that you’re complacent.
“I think that as you evolve as a character and as an actor, I think that they just come with a new set of challenges,” she continued. Reflecting on her General Hospital journey, she added, “I mean, it’s very rare that you get to walk into a show and get to work with one star, let alone 50 of them, you know, and it’s on a rotating basis for a while.”
It has been a learning experience that Pohl has really enjoyed. “There were plenty of people that I hadn’t worked with that I’ve just gotten to recently or, I’m sure that there’s someone that I haven’t gotten to cross paths with at work or in scenes.” The actress revealed to fans just how grateful she was. “I think it really is a gift. I just really think it’s a blessing.”
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