A Fresh Start
by Rosemary Rossi
from ABC Soaps in Depth Online

Nancy Lee Grahn hopes you'll meet the real Alexis Davis

Back when Jill Farren Phelps was at the helm of SANTA BARBARA, Nancy Lee Grahn was given some of her richest material as witty lawyer Julia Wainwright. So now that the executive producer has taken over the reins of GENERAL HOSPITAL, the actress is hopeful that viewers will become better acquainted with — and enamored of — her current character, clever attorney Alexis Davis. In fact, already the Emmy winner is noticing that the more her alter ego discusses her independence, the more the words sound like her own.
One statement in particular, regarding Alexis’ faltering romance with reformed playboy Ned Ashton, had particular resonance for her portrayer. “The truest line she has uttered [about marrying Ned] is, ‘I want to want this,’” she asserts, adding that she, too, has arrived at a time in her life where she is weighing her personal needs against her professional aspirations. “I want to want a relationship, but I am content right now. I feel like a relationship will take time away from my joy. Like Alexis, I’m feeling that men want more of my time, and I’m just not prepared to give it because I’m already filled up with things that satisfy me. I can completely, totally, 100 percent identify with Alexis. If anyone were nagging at me or going, ‘But I need you,’ other than my daughter or another child, I’m really not interested.

“This is exactly why I’m having trouble mating,” she adds with a laugh. “Not that I’m trying to.”

Grahn finds it very interesting that GH’s audience seems to be siding with Alexis rather than Ned in the wake of his near-miss at making her his missus. “Isn’t that funny? I think what it shows is that the fans, in a way, are healthy!” she suggests. “They have a sense of themselves. It’s not a good idea to go into a relationship expecting anyone to change. I’m on Alexis’ side, too — I’ve been in both places. I’ve been Ned and now I’m Alexis. I’ve been in the place where I thought that the person I was in the relationship with should make adjustments in order to accommodate my needs. That did not work.

“The other thing,” she continues, “is, I don’t think Alexis is a workaholic. She’s just following her bliss. What Ned is upset about is that maybe work is more exciting to her than he is. The good thing about this is that it’s a real-life dilemma. I think that’s what people are relating to. There are a lot of women that aren’t inwardly fulfilled and that are looking for it in their mate. I’ve been that woman. But I much prefer where I am now.”

Since, as a defense attorney, Alexis fights for the right for others, if Ned has a problem with that… well, he just needs to get over it. “For him to say, ‘I want you to stay home and spend time with me so we can snuggle,’ personally, I think Ned should go get a job!” Grahn ventures. “Maybe he should spend a more time at L&B [his record company] trying to get that going. Things can get dull when there’s no obstacles.

“Ned and Alexis have appeared to be the same,” she adds. “What you’re seeing now is that they’re not alike at all. Now it’s getting a little more interesting. He needs to know how to ‘work’ her, and she needs to know that she can’t totally ‘work’ him. It’s not perfect in paradise.”

Of course, when it comes to matters of the heart, Alexis always has been flying without an instruction manual. She may have come into the world knowing what to do naturally, but her environment as an illegitimate Cassadine messed that up big time. “Helena slit her mother’s throat, which is so big and gothic. But Alexis doesn’t treat Helena like she’s done that,” Grahn notes. “She has no natural response except these witty little remarks that they have.”

Fired up, she adds: “Why hasn’t Alexis taped a confession of Helena saying that [she killed Alexis’ mother] and given it to the police? She’s a criminal attorney! Isn't there some recourse that she would have taken over the years? It doesn’t ring true for me. So I play it that Alexis has just blocked it.”

Isn’t that quite a stretch for a smart woman like Alexis? Only kind of — to make her likeable, Grahn long ago chose to make her a little bit mental. “I made her neurotic!” she explains. “I led [the writers] to the path of neurosis, and they went with it. I did that on purpose because any good character that you read in novels has a strange eccentricity. No good character is normal. If you’re neurotic, you can do all sorts of things.”

Luckily, such mind games don’t factor into Grahn’s real life with 3-year-old daughter Kate. The little girl makes the same expressive faces that her mom does, and has a similar sense of humor — just Mama, Kate gets the joke and gives back a great one. “She’s a bit of a drama queen,” Grahn smiles. “She’s defiant like I am. I see how she’s so much like me, and I think it’s so funny.”

In a way, Grahn is a bit surprised that the parenting experience has been so easy. “I expected it to be much more stressful. Things are going very smoothly and it’s always shocking when anything goes smoothly.”

Although she’s a full-time parent and a full-time actress, Grahn says humbly that juggling is something that every mother learns how to do. “I think there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about what I do. I have a lot of help. There’s no struggle here for me. The majority of the time I choose to spend with her is because that’s what I get a kick out of doing.”

original acticle