Forty years after joining General Hospital as Lucy Coe, Lynn Herring is back in the thick of the storytelling, a welcome turn for the longtime star.
For Herring, whose appearances on the canvas have been infrequent at times, having Port Charles to return to on a more regular basis has been especially meaningful as she continues to grieve the loss of her late husband Wayne Northrop (ex-Roman Brady, Days of our Lives), who died in November 2024 from complications of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
“When folks didn’t know about Wayne, it was kind of a great thing to not be on the canvas as much,” Herring reflects. “Anybody that’s lost a spouse knows that even though time goes by and you love your children so much, I love my work at GH, and I love my animals on the ranch, there’s a hole that never gets filled. I still cuss him sometimes for going. You have those days where something so wonderful has happened or something so bad, and there’s always the person you want to tell about it. But I think you just learn to live with it.”
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At the same time, diving into Lucy’s drama has given Herring a welcome outlet and a chance to focus on something she truly loves. “It’s part of healing when you get to play somebody else for a while and do Lucy,” Herring points out. “I have been itching to play a great storyline, so what a gift it is that at this time in my life, I have a real meaty storyline that might make the audience understand Lucy more and hopefully enjoy it.”
A major piece of that storyline is the return of Serena Baldwin (Kelly Kruger), the biological daughter of Scotty Baldwin (Kin Shriner) and Dominique Stanton (Shell Danielson), whom Lucy carried as a surrogate after Dominique was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Dominique died before Serena was born, leaving Lucy to adopt and raise her alongside Scotty.
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Herring was thrilled to welcome Lucy’s daughter back to the canvas. “Oh, it is everything,” she enthuses. “I still think that our audience loves legacy characters and they relate their personal history to us. I know just bringing up Lucy being a surrogate and not having been able to have her own children and then getting to carry Serena is such a storyline gift and adds dimension to Lucy’s past.”
The connection between the characters — and between the actresses — was apparent almost immediately, both on screen and off. “I always say that the actors that are willing to play have a twinkle in their eyes,” she relays. “And maybe during rehearsal, you say something totally off the wall as your character that isn’t in the script, or just enhance something, and you can always judge how someone reacts when you’re ad-libbing a little bit or just playing. And right from the moment I started talking to her, that twinkle in her eye was so much fun because I could see that if I toss her something, she’ll toss it back. She understood that Lucy is going to be kind of a strange character as her mom, that there’s going to be a different dynamic than normal mom relationships, and she just rolled with it. It’s such a magical feeling when you have that with another actor.”
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Deception, the cosmetics company Lucy founded in 1991, is another important piece of the current story. Herring still has a tangible reminder of the company’s early days. “I actually have the original crystal perfume bottle the prop guys gave me from one of the first Deception shows,” she shares.
Lucy’s long history of scheming is also front and center, as she enlists Serena to get close to Michael Corinthos (Rory Gibson), who recently came into possession of Maxie Jones’ (Kirsten Storms) Deception shares — shares that both Lucy and Tracy Quartermaine (Jane Elliot) are eager to claim. For Lucy, however, the company represents far more than a business.
“I think the moral compass is a little off,” Herring acknowledges. “Lucy never points true north. She’s never felt like society, and her peers accept her and think she has any kind of wherewithal. I really think she’s still the gal that came on the show, wanting to be a Quartermaine, wanting to have people accept her. That just hasn’t gone away. That’s a hole that hasn’t been filled for Lucy yet. So, Lucy has had it with Tracy and needs to get those shares.”
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And the fun is just beginning for Lucy and Serena. “I think it’s going to be interesting is how far they push each other, and who’s the more determined and the more ambitious,” Herring previews. “We teased a little bit about Serena’s past love life and how it’s impacted her and also about her money, and I love that they’ve layered in a lot of things in Serena’s past that could impact Lucy and Serena.”
Four decades after first walking into Port Charles, Herring continues to cherish her place on the show that changed her life. “I wouldn’t have the same amazing life without General Hospital,” she states. “I wouldn’t be Lynn without General Hospital. It gave me so much freedom to be creative and then live a dual life of being an environmentalist and saving the land that I care about. I am so grateful. So besides being artistically fulfilled and meeting the beautiful, diverse, myriad of people that have been in our life from the crew and the cast, it’s a blessing, and the 40 years is like this cherry on top that the milestone. It means that I have had a life so well lived because of General Hospital that I walk in there and I snap my ID on the gate, and it goes up, and every single time I say, ‘Thank you. I love being here.’ ”
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