Paula's Soapbox

A few years ago I became acquainted with Steven Moreti, an up and coming actor who has appeared in a variety of well-known movies and television shows including "In Her Shoes" and "Annapolis", as well as CBS's "The Bold and the Beautiful". I recently had the opportunity and honor of interviewing Steven about his career, most notably his desire to be on "General Hospital". Read the full interview below and be sure to join the facebook page that was set up specifically to generate interest in getting Steven on "General Hospital".   photo provided by Steven Moreti You've made a few appearances on the "Bold and the Beautiful," but have been lobbying to be on General Hospital" for a while, so what is it about this particular soap that attracts you? First, let me mention something quickly about B&B... When I walked onto the set, the first person I saw was Rick Hearst (GH's Rick...

I think we can all agree that this has been a tumultuous week for daytime television and its fans. We have received news nearly every day of a soap actor or actress who has either been fired or has chosen to leave their respective shows. If you were one of the many fans on twitter after the news broke that GH's Rebecca Herbst had been, as they say, "let go" you know how heated some of the discussions about her departure became. So many people were angered by this news and viewed it as one more slap in the face to daytime and its fans. People understandably wanted someone to blame and wanted to find a way to keep Rebecca on the show. If you were one of these people or are just looking to find something positive in all the negative that has happened in daytime recently, check out the post " GH Fans We Are Our Own Worst Enemies " by fellow soap blogger Silas Kain over at Soapbox1 . In this post Silas not only discusses the firing of Rebecca Herbst, but James Franc...

When it was announced that James Franco would be joining General Hospital for a brief acting stint, my hope was that his presence would generate renewed interest in the show. And while he may have achieved this feat on some scale, his character Franco and the storyline attached to him seems to possess a polarizing quality that sparks either love or hate, with little room in between. For the most part I was intrigued by Franco's character and this storyline. In fact on certain days it was the only interesting part of General Hospital amid the sleep-inducing love triangles involving Robin, Patrick, Lisa, Lucky, Liz, and Nikolas. Overall though I would have to say that the Franco storyline failed to live up to my expectations. There were many disappointments along the way, not the least of which was the revelation that CO77X was only a booking number with no profound meaning. Perhaps the biggest disappointment though, and in my opinion a great oversight, was the fact that Franco had n...

James Franco may not have known a lot about soap operas when he decided to take part in one, but judging from today's General Hospital it almost seems surprising that this is new territory for him. Granted, he was only in a few scenes, in fact one of them was replayed from yesterday's episode, but he seems to possess an understated mysteriousness that is so befitting of soaps. I believe this quality will be especially beneficial to him on a show like GH where the characters are so complex that most of the time it is difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys. And while viewers still know very little about the character Franco, it appears, at least for now, that he is the latter. Throughout today's ambush Franco watched nearby with a kind of childlike wonderment, as if he were getting some sort of satisfaction out of all the violence and longed to be a part of it. At one point he even appeared to be mimicking everyone's moves like he was studying some sort of arti...

For about a week General Hospital fans have undoubtedly played the minute-long James Franco promo over and over again, trying to gain some insight into his contribution to the show. Included in this promo was an image of Claudia's body inside a chalk outline, with her head surrounded by a pool of blood. Upon seeing this image, speculation immediately began that perhaps the mysterious, and aptly named, Franco had retrieved Claudia's body from the ground in order to snap pictures of it. Today, viewers saw a close-up of her body within this chalk outline, but as it turned out this wasn't Claudia at all. Instead this body was revealed to be a model dressed as Claudia who was presumably allowing herself to be photographed by Franco. Obviously these pictures will be sent to Jason as part of some sinister plot, even as he tries to figure out who sent the picture of Claudia wrapped in tarp. To be honest, I find the real mystery to be how someone could move quickly enough to take a ...

As the Claudia storyline comes to a close, viewers are being introduced to an unquestionably more mysterious one, with repeated glimpses of the "CO77X" graffiti. Viewers have seen this code-like tag in countless scenes this week. And it is usually accompanied by crime scene photos in a presumably abandoned office of some sort. The mystery surrounding "CO77X" only became more intriguing on Friday when it was seen among newspaper clippings depicting the arrest of Jason Morgan. This particular scene also contained multiple inscriptions of Jason's name written in chalk, as if to signify an obsession. This leads me to believe that someone may be fixated on putting Jason behind bars. And since I can pretty much guarantee that this does not involve Mac, this can only mean one thing, the introduction of James Franco's character. James Franco makes his daytime debut in less than a month, so it stands to reason that GH would already be laying the groundwork for his st...