GH’s Laura Wright Says ‘I Don’t See Carly Walking Away’ From Brennan (Exclusive)

General Hospital‘s Carly has a lot on her plate — including ex-husband Sonny’s recent health scare, her deep worry over hospitalized son Michael’s prognosis and her surprise alliance with Nina to split up Willow and Drew’s scandalous relationship — but there’s one potential looming crisis she’s completely oblivious to: her new lover, WSB Chief Jack Brennan, has enlisted her daughter Josslyn to become an agent! Soap Opera Digest checked in with Carly’s portrayer, Laura Wright, for her take on her burgeoning on-screen romance with Chris McKenna (Brennan) and the secret that could blow it all up.

Jack Of All Trades

To hear Wright tell it, she was totally free of trepidation about keeping the Carly/Brennan chemistry alive when Charles Mesure vacated the role earlier this year and it was recast with McKenna. “I wasn’t even thinking about it not working,” she says. “Quite frankly, we didn’t have enough time! It happened very quickly. One minute, one actor was there; the next minute we were looking for another [actor]. There was no choice but to recast; with the amount of story that was already written and in place, it wasn’t able to be rewritten or adjusted, even, at that point because of how committed we were to the story, and that it happened to involve [other characters], like Eden’s [McCoy, Josslyn]. When you’re in that situation, you just go, ‘This is what it is!’ There wasn’t even time to think that it wasn’t going to be okay.”

The actress was impressed by McKenna even before he showed up to work on his first day. “I had messaged Chris over the weekend before he started, because our first day, I think we had three or four shows [to tape]. I went, ‘I know it seems daunting, but it’s gonna be great! We’ll do one scene at a time.’ And he was like, ‘It’s not daunting at all. Let’s go!’ I was like, ‘Oh, my God — great!’ You don’t get that [confidence and enthusiasm] from a lot of actors, especially at the beginning, just because what we do is very challenging at first. Well, it’s still challenging [even after years of experience] — I had three shows [in one day] two weeks ago and I thought I was going to lose my mind because it was a lot of dialogue, so it’s challenging no matter what! But with Chris, he’s been like that since he got there. He shows up, he knows [the material], he does it, anything that we want to adjust or change, he’s like, ‘Okay, great.’ And we laugh all the time — he’s hilarious!”

Secrets Are No Fun

Carly seems to be all-in on her new man — but a bunch of people who are important to her, including BFF Jason and half brother Lucas, have strongly encouraged her against pursuing the relationship. “I think in true Carly fashion, she’s like, ‘Back off!’ ” observes Wright with a chuckle. “She’s like, ‘I’m going to do what I want to do.’ But it’s not only that — I think there’s something very different about Brennan to her. She feels, in an odd way, that he’s comfort, he’s safe, he’s solid. His job out there in the world may be dangerous, but when she’s with him, I think she feels something she’s never felt before and that’s that someone really wants to be with her and it feels more like home.”

Jack feels very much like the right guy for Carly at this particular juncture in her life, Wright says. “She’s at this point in time where Donna is young, but she goes back and forth between her and Sonny. I feel like Carly could move into Jack’s Metro Court room for the entire time that Donna is away with Sonny and just never leave. That’s the security that I think she feels with this man, who is powerful and worldly. He can teach her things that I don’t think she knows. His world goes way beyond Port Charles, whereas that [has been Carly’s whole world]. I think she sees that there could be a big life with this man who has been so many places and done so many things and wants to take care of her. I don’t see Carly walking away, at all.” The actress pauses, then adds, “Until she finds out the truth [about his professional affiliation to Josslyn] and will probably lose her mind!”

Which is something she and McKenna have discussed on set. “It’s one of the things we laugh about. I’m like, ‘I feel so sorry for you, Chris, for once Carly finds out,’ and he’s like, ‘I know, I know,’ and we just crack up.”

When Carly established the ground rules for her relationship with Brennan, she made clear that she was okay with secrets, but not lies. But given her many marriages to mobster Sonny, it’s certainly in her wheelhouse to be with a man who can’t be fully transparent with her about his line of work. While that frequently frustrated a younger Carly, “It’s different [with Brennan],” Wright insists. “She’s not that age anymore. Carly has buried a son [Morgan], she’s had two daughters since then…. And there’s a comfort in how Brennan [approaches it]. Sonny was like, ‘Get out, Carly!’ there was an aggressiveness to their relationship at that time.”

Not only that, Wright notes, but “Carly had a lot of insecurity as a young woman. Well, now she’s a very successful businesswoman and a mother and she doesn’t need anything from Brennan. She doesn’t need him in order to survive. And so his honesty about not being able to tell her everything about his job is, I think, something that Carly feels she can depend on, and is consistent, and he’s not being a [jerk] about it! He’s not saying, ‘I get to do what I want.’ He’s not yelling at her or speaking to her the way that Sonny spoke to Carly back in that day. In this day and age, the woman that Carly is, she does not get spoken to like that, right? Brennan treats her with respect, which is a very big deal.

“So, in a lot of ways, I think it’s very different this time,” the actress continues. “And it makes sense. It’s his job! If she was dating someone in the CIA, it’d be the same thing. It’s called, ‘Grow up, Carly! It’s a big girl’s life, that someone has a job you’re choosing to date and quite frankly, why do you need to know about his job?’ And he’s very honest about it — until he’s not [laughs].”

Of course, at the moment it’s nowhere on Carly’s radar that Josslyn is working with Brennan — not even when she voiced her concerns about her mom taking up with the guy. “She has to see Josslyn as just one more person that’s just worried about her mom’s safety,” Wright shrugs. “We can’t go there, story-wise, because when we do go there [and the truth comes out], it’s got to be just a complete smack in the face.”