General Hospital: Lulu and Nathan Kiss — Alexa Havins Dishes the Drama as ‘Here Comes Maxie!’ (Excl)
Waiting out a blizzard together and with their inhibitions loosened by some adult beverages, Lulu Spencer and Nathan West shared a kiss on the Thursday, January 29 episode of General Hospital. Even though they’ve been growing closer for weeks now, this marks a huge turn in their relationship — one that seems destined to create massive drama when Kirsten Storms returns to the show in February as Maxie Jones, Lulu’s best friend and Nathan’s “widow,” who has been lingering in a coma since last summer and doesn’t even know that her husband is alive! Soap Opera Digest unpacked the juicy storyline with Lulu’s portrayer, Alexa Havins.
Kiss and Tell
As a veteran daytime star, Havins says she could see the Lulu/Nathan writing on the wall from the moment Ryan Paevey rejoined the cast last September and Lulu was the one to stumble upon him after his car accident. “My soap eyes saw the easter egg,” she chuckles. “I went, ‘Oh, surprise, Lulu of all people finds the car crash!’ Right there, I went, ‘Ding! Okay, he’s gonna be my new love interest.’”
Her instincts were, of course, spot on. But as she started working more closely with Paevey, Havins couldn’t help but nurse reservations about Lulu falling for Maxie’s back-from-the-dead spouse. She explains, “I try to live a life of integrity and my moral compass was going, ‘No, no, that’s your best friend!’ But whether or not I would do it, my job is to take what’s on the page and to try to elevate it and make it interesting, and this certainly makes for a great story!”
Besides, it’s not as though Lulu set out to steal her bestie’s man. “This is a relationship that never would have happened if Maxie was in Port Charles,” Havins asserts. “It reminds me of those stories you read about where a spouse dies and the wife ends up marrying his best friend because they’re there. And here was Lulu and here was Nathan, and they’re grieving because of Maxie; Lulu knows that she might not come back, ever. And then they also have that common connection [of having missed years in their lives, Lulu to a coma and Nathan due to the still-unknown circumstances of his long presumed death]. It’s almost like they’re in a survivor support group, of ‘no one understands this time lost.’ And he’s the one that does.”
The Lulu/Nathan bond, she continues, “started as this innocent friendship of him helping to protect Charlotte and Lulu helping him with James, and them bonding over Maxie, and that they have a common understanding of what they’re going through. I think it blossomed quite unexpectedly — and I think the audience saw that on the New Year’s Eve episode,” she adds, referring to the charged moment the pair shared after Nathan and Lulu listed what they had to be grateful for and named each other.
“I love that the writers made it a slow burn and there was nothing before that [episode],” Havins praises. “They were just in each other’s presence. There was no flirting. I thought they really did a nice job of laying that real slow foundation, and then when he hit her [on New Year’s Eve] with, ‘and I have you,’ Lulu was really taken off-guard by that and by their connection. Even though it’s like this forbidden fruit, because they’ve got baggage — they’ve got Dante [Dominic Zamprogna, Lulu’s ex-husband and co-parent, who is also tight with Nathan], they’ve got Maxie, they’ve got history where they wouldn’t necessarily keep moving forward together. But it was one event after another that kept throwing them in each other’s faces, and sometimes you don’t know that an emotional connection is building until it hits you in the face.”
Or, in the case of the kiss, the lips. But in the aftermath of the intimate moment, previews Havins, Lulu quickly sobers up. “I love what the writers wrote for Lulu’s initial reaction to the kiss, which you’ll see is, ‘No. We cannot do this to Maxie. This never would have happened if alcohol weren’t involved and the craziness of the storm. If Maxie was here, this never would have happened.’ I liked that the feelings were real and she’s being drawn to him, but then there was also that push of, ‘No, this is wrong.’”
Of course, keeping a lid on their growing feelings may be more easily said than done for both Nathan and Lulu. For her part, says Havins, “Lulu is determined that this can never happen again. But you can say one thing, and your heart feels something else. And the next time they see each other after the kiss, it was really fun to play the longing as she’s trying to stay true to her resolve of, ‘No, this cannot happen.’ Can you just shut off feelings and emotions? Unfortunately, no, because that’s not how we are wired as humans. Feelings cause you to want something because it feels good, but that doesn’t exactly mean it’s going to bring good things! So, that’s the thing — can she control this? Can she stop this runaway train? Because it’s on its way to heading for disaster because here comes your best friend!”
Indeed — because lest viewers forget, we’re only two weeks out from Storms’s hotly anticipated comeback as Maxie. Grins Havins, “In perfect soap fashion, it’s, 3-2-1, kiss the husband and then here comes Maxie! It makes for such great drama.”
Alexa Havins
General Hospital