Sara Bibel always has a great take on soaps in her Fancast column Deep Soap. It’s no surprise, since she was a former staff writer at Y&R.
Sara was part of the group of bloggers who went to NYC in December for Guiding Light, and she was also in Orlando last week to cover GL. If you haven’t seen her reports from Orlando, check them out here.
Her report included this mindblowing piece of information from Crystal Chappell:
Sara: When you first found out about the storyline, what did you think? Were you surprised that Olivia was going to develop an attraction to a woman?
Chappell: I’m a soap fan, so I think that most characters can do just about anything. People walk through paintings. Deciding you have feelings for a woman is not that big of a stretch. I was thrilled.
This story’s been talked about for years. Jill Hurst originally thought about it for Maureen Garrett (Holly) and myself. It’s nice that people are open to us actually doing it. I think they’ve handled it very well.
OMG!! Not that I don’t love Otalia, but I think seeing Holly in that story would have been amazing. Or maybe I just want to see Holly in ANY story! (Well, no, I’ve got to be specific – any good story.)
Of all the characters we don’t see any more on Guiding Light, Holly is the one I miss the most. Maureen Garrett is so much a part of the tapestry of GL that it’s hard to think of Springfield without her.
A | THOUSAND | OTHER | WORLDS 
I know!! I had to take a small moment to myself when I read that.
If nothing else it would be great ti have Holly back as a confidant for Olivia right now. Lord knows she could use a friend and Dinah is a little busy.
It would be very refreshing to have Holly on our screens again. Talk about a character missing from the canvas for too long!
I’ll second that in saying how much I miss Maureen (Garrett). She was as much the heart and soul to me as any Spaulding or Bauer, and my first memories of GL really revolve around Holly and Roger. I hated what they did to the character with the “Nursery Rhyme Stalker” crapfest- and she was the only redeeming part of the Sebastian storyline- which might have worked had Sebastian not been totally miscast.
I agree, Tom. Doug Hutchinson is a great actor, but he was such an odd fit for Sebastian. The idea to bring Sebastian into Holly’s life and remind her of Roger was inspired, but it ended up reaching a weird point, especially when they decided to kill him off.
I am still glad that one of Ellen Wheeler’s first moves was to acknowledge and honor Roger Thorpe by saying goodbye on screen.
I wish Sara Bibel would have found out when that idea originated. Otherwise I find that idea oddly fascinating, though if I had done a story with Holly falling in love with a woman, I would rather have been Alex or Vanessa due to the wild family connections and shared love interests of the past. The ramifications of such a plot could have been huge and rippled throughout the canvas.
I miss Holly so much and watching Maureen Garrett act. A story like that if written well could have been great.
“Jill Hurst originally thought about it for Maureen Garrett (Holly) and myself.”
I think my head just exploded. To echo your thoughts, it’s not that I don’t find Otalia fascinating, but anything with Maureen Garrett is automatically 100% amazing in my book. I don’t even want to think about how this would have played out with Holly, because it will make me cry tears of anguish over the fact that MG is no longer on the show.
I am desperate for her to come back to Guiding Light. If she could somehow be involved in the Otalia storyline, all the better. Hell, bring her on as a love interest for Doris! That could be all shades of interesting.
Somebody remind Jill Lorie Hurst that Doris needs a girlfriend now, and her combination of piss and vinegar would probably be very attractive to someone like Holly.
It’s hard to lobby for Holly’s return when her own daughter, Blake, has no storyline either, and Blake is a more viable romantic character.
I like to believe Holly’s either reunited with Fletcher and Meg, OR with Ed. She deserves a happy ending.
Should Jerry ver Dorn ever return to GL, it would be interesting if amnesiac Ross first came into contact with Holly, out of town, and fell in love with her again first, before Blake.
I think my head exploded as well. As a closested teenage gay boy, Crystal Chappell and Maureen Garrett were the most fascinating women in daytime to me at one point, for very different reasons. Maureen Garrett’s Holly was an exquisitely-written, intelligent, successful, meticulously dressed, beautiful 40-ish character who underneath her well-bred facade was a complete wreck, who got to pop headache pills and say the kind of sarcastic, neurotic things to people (including her own daughter) that I wished I could say. On the other hand, I spent a summer strangely fascinated by the story in which Crystal Chappell was buried alive on (James Reilly’s) DOOL… She was also playing a beautiful, well-dressed, professional character, and she pulled off the tortured Gothic heroine with such gusto (so much better than Deidre Hall in Reilly’s later over-the-top stories, IMO) that foreshadowed the kind of award-winning acting she would do later in her career with more complex characterizations.
Well, as fascinating as it would have been for me as an adult to see these two actresses – who are still among the most beautiful in soaps – playing daytime’s first established characters to embark on a same-sex relationship. I think the cumulative history between their two characters would have been too much. Especially since both Holly and Olivia are rape survivors, I can’t imagine how even a show with the kind of stellar writing that GL had 15 years ago (which they sure don’t have now) could have possibly avoided man-hating lesbian stereotypes. I think a lot of people would have walked away thinking Holly either hated Roger so she turned to a woman and/or she couldn’t have Roger because he’s dead so she decided to give bisexuality a try.
From what I have seen of Natalia, she is lovely and she and Olivia definitely have chemistry. The actress is not Maureen Garrett, but she is quite good. And the character is coming from a different place than Olivia so it’s harder to write off their relationship with any one, pat excuse.
Nevertheless, I do agree with everyone else that I sure wish GL would bring back Holly and give her something to do. That and Olivia and Natalia would actually be enough for me to tune back in regularly.
Hi John, thanks for your comment! That’s a very interesting point you make about Olivia and Holly and one I hadn’t thought of (that they’re both rape survivors).
I’d settle for seeing Holly even as much as we see Blake. All these kids are going to have to go to Springfield U, and Holly, the former newspaper publisher, should be a professor there!