The Soap Opera World Mourns the Loss of Kobe Bryant

Even if all four soap operas weren’t based in Los Angeles, the daytime community would be mourning the sudden and tragic loss of basketball legend Kobe Bryant. Soap opera stars joined the rest of the world in expressing their thoughts over Bryant’s untimely passing.

Soap Hub was among the many outlets to report that Bryant, his daughter, Gianna, 13, and seven others died on Sunday after a helicopter they were traveling in crashed in Calabasas, Calif. There were no survivors.

Actors including The Young and the Restless’ Eric Braeden (Victor) and Melissa Ordway (Abby), Days of our Lives star Greg Vaughan (Eric) and Linsey Godfrey (Sarah), General Hospital’s Nancy Lee Grahn (Alexis), Jon Lindstrom (Kevin), Mark Lawson (Dustin), and Parry Shen (Brad), and The Bold and the Beautiful players Courtney Hope (Sally), Darin Brooks (Wyatt), and Rome Flynn (ex-Zende) were among the those who expressed their shock over Bryant’s passing and their well-wishes to his widow Vanessa and the couple’s three surviving children, Natalia Diamante Bryant, Bianka Bella Bryant, and Capri Kobe Bryant.

Bryant won an Oscar in 2018 for the Best Animated Short titled Dear Basketball, the player’s love letter to the game that meant so much to him. In 2000, he appeared as a fictionalized version of himself on the short-lived Bette Midler sitcom Bette. The episode, I Love This Game, was directed by former daytime director Andrew D. Weyman (Edge of Night, Another World, Guiding Light, Loving, Santa Barbara).

Bryant never had a walk-on role on a daytime soap, but he was a regular on the daytime talk show circuit, having appeared on such shows as Ellen, The View, The Talk, Today, and Good Morning America.

DAYS’ Godfrey also expressed sympathy for others lost in the crash, including Orange County baseball coach John Altobelli, his daughter Alyssa and wife Keri. Soap Hub joins the daytime world in sending sincere sympathies to Bryant’s family and also to his friends and fans around the world.