After A Summer Away, Mary Beth Evans And Her GH Character Are:
Back With A Vengeance!
Soap Opera Weekly
By Deidre Martin
Photography: Jeff Katz
September 15, 1998 Issue
Katherine Bell is back from the grave, and boy is she pissed. At General Hospital’s Bacchanalia Ball in late May, a celebration meant to mark her engagement to the enigmatic Stefan Cassadine, not only did she discover that her fiancé was surreptitiously (not to mention creepily) trying to remake her in the image of his old paramour Laura Spencer, but she also took a nasty tumble from a parapet and plunged to what appeared to be her death.
But things are rarely what they seem in daytime, so it comes as no surprise to learn that Katherine wasn’t really dead, but rather dosed- by none other than the Cassadine matriarch, Helena- with a serum designed to make her appear dead. Helena hates her son, Stefan, and now so does Katherine. To say the potential exists for some serious fireworks in Port Charles is an understatement.
“This is exciting on so many levels,” says Mary Beth Evans, the actress who’s been playing Katherine for five years. “My prediction is things are going to get extremely complicated when it comes to Luke, Laura, Katherine and Stefan. Throw all the stuff with Helena, Nikolas and Alexis into the mix and it really becomes dynamite.”
Evans is coy when asked if she hopes her character winds up having a romantic tryst with Luke Spencer, choosing only to say, “I don’t know what the writers have in store, but it certainly shouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility, just as Laura and Stefan winding up together temporarily isn’t too far-fetched either. Luke and Katherine both feel incredibly betrayed by their partners, which I would think would create a very strong connection between them. All I know is it’s probably going to be a very long time before Stefan and Katherine find their way back together, if at all.”
“This experience has changed Katherine irrevocably,” she continues. “Not only has she been through a tremendous physical ordeal, but she’s also been shattered emotionally, and it’s made her extremely bitter. She’s determined never to allow herself to be this vulnerable to anyone again.” She pauses. “You know Katherine has always had this bitchy edge to her personality that I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with, because it was never very clear to me where it was coming from. But now, God knows, she has every right to be nasty! I, for one, can’t wait to see how this whole thing is going to unfold.”
Her character’s resurrection is delightful not just because of the myriad, complicated possibilities it presents in terms of her storyline. Simply put, Evans is thrilled to be back at work.
“I was fine the first five weeks I was off, but after that I was dying to return to the show. It got to the point where I was fantasizing about working in McDonald’s just to keep myself occupied. I imagined people coming up to the counter saying, ‘Hey, didn’t you used to work on a soap?’ while I asked them if they wanted fries with their Coke,” she jokes.
While Evans makes it sound like she was lying low, waiting for GH to call and let her know when it was time to play Lady Lazarus, nothing is further from the truth. Knowing she was going to have off most of the summer, she chose not to send her three children- Danny, 10, Katie, 8, and Matthew, 5- to camp this year, opting instead to play camp counselor herself. “We went to the beach, and we saw every kid’s movie there was to see. In between, I chauffeured them to diving lessons, water polo…,” she gives an exhausted whistle, and then laughs. “I needed to get back to work just to start bringing some more money in. It was a pretty expensive summer!”
When she wasn’t spending time with her kids, she was training with a friend for a mini-triathlon, which took place July 26. “We basically worked out every morning from 8 until noon, riding bikes, swimming, and running. The event itself consisted of a half-mile ocean swim followed by a 12-mile bike ride, and a 3 mile run.” Evans says she did well in the race, placing in the middle of her age group. “It was a huge challenge, but a lot of fun. I’m just happy I was able to get through it without dropping dead along the way.”
Being back at work is a challenge too, she admits. “I not only have to get myself back into the routine, but I also have to get used to being back in Katherine’s skin. I think it’s a little tough on my kids, too. I adored being home with them and they adored having me there. My daughter couldn’t understand why I wasn’t staying home for good like so many of her friends’ mommies. I had to explain to her, ‘Mommy likes to go to work. It makes Mommy happy, and when Mommy’s happy, everyone’s happy’.”
Happy is exactly the word that springs to mind when speaking to Evans. Voluble, witty, and down-to-earth, Evans says she was “born effervescent”, and there’s very little that gets her down. “I know it probably sounds corny, but I’m one of those people who wake up in the morning feeling enthusiastic about the day ahead, and it’s something that I’m working very hard to instill in my children. I want them to have that same zest for life and sense of awe that I do.”
That Evans worships her kids and gets a huge kick out of being a mom is abundantly clear. But ask her about her husband of 13 years, plastic surgeon Michael Schwartz, and her voice gets downright gooey. “We’ve been together for close to 20 years now and I swear to you, I love him more than ever,” she sighs. “That’s the one thing I do have in common with Katherine: She’s madly in love with Stefan, and I’m totally smitten with my husband.”
The two met when Evans was 19 and Schwartz, then a medical student, went to see a play she happened to be performing in. “It was love at first sight, but on the surface it also probably looked like opposites attracting. Michael was this polite, well-educated guy from the East-Coast, and there I was, the typical California girl, driving around in my bug convertible listening to Buffalo Springfield tapes,” she says with a laugh. “But something obviously clicked, because four months later I pulled up stakes and moved with him to Chicago for a year and a half while he finished up med school.”
The key to their union’s longevity, she says, is that they’ve managed to grow together, and they laugh a lot. We crack each other up all the time,” the actress explains. “We also work at keeping the romance alive, which is important. Too many couples get married and then let their relationship go on automatic pilot. I am proud to say that we have never done that.”
Clearly a romantic at heart, Evans says she adored the weeks leading up to the Bacchanalia Ball, when Stefan’s wooing of Katherine was in high gear. “I love doing all that dancing by candlelight stuff, so part of me is sad that their romance is over for now. Left to me, I’d probably let the gauzy romantic stuff go on and on, but as an actress, I realize that doesn’t necessarily make for the best drama.”
Evans knows whence she speaks. Letting the “romantic stuff go on and on” was de rigueur when she was on Days of our Lives, where she played sweet nurse Kayla Brady to Stephen Nichols’ bad boy, Steve “Patch” Johnson. “I enjoyed my six years on Days, but it was all love stories, all the time, often to the exclusion of everything else. If Stefan and Katherine were characters on Days, not only would they be madly in love forever, they would talk about being madly in love forever, too. I think it’s fabulous that GH took such a popular couple and blew up the relationship.
One of the things I love about this show is that the characters are all very real. They’re multifaceted, and even the so-called ‘good’ characters have flaws. And the women! All the female characters have incredibly strong personalities, which I really like.”
As for Evans’ character specifically, expect to see Katherine raising hell and then some. “She’s furious and determined to wreak revenge on Stefan in the worst way possible,” says the actress gleefully. “How she’s going to do it is as much a mystery to me as it is to you, but I have no doubt it’s going to be very, very interesting.”
no comments