“It’s good to be home,” begins Alexa Havins Bruening, who will make her General Hospital debut on Tuesday, November 19 as Lulu Spencer, daughter of soaps’ biggest supercouple, Luke Spencer (Anthony Geary) and Laura Collins (Genie Francis). “It feels like sliding right back into something that I loved so much.”
It’s been over two decades since Havins Bruening hit the daytime scene in 2003, playing Babe Carey on All My Children. While toiling in Pine Valley, she and co-star Justin Bruening (Jamie Martin) fell in love and married in June 2005. They left the soap in 2007 and Havins continued performing, but motherhood ultimately became her top priority. “I wasn’t planning on working,” she shares. “I thought it was kind of done. “When I went on Sweet Magnolias [in 2023] and they asked me to go play Justin’s ex [Vicky; he plays Cal Maddox], I said to him, ‘Oh, this will wrap it up in a little bow. It’ll be sweet for the kids. We met on the first thing I did and the last thing I did.’ And I genuinely thought that because I’ve taken time off to be home with the kids and focus on raising them. We home-school, and we travel with Justin. Working really wasn’t on my radar at all.”
Her husband, however, never gave up hope. “Justin would always tease me. He’d say, ‘Oh babe, I paid your SAG dues.’ He would always encourage me, like, ‘I’m not giving up on you.’ I’m like, ‘OK, I’m pregnant with another baby. That’s nice of you. Thanks for paying my SAG dues.’ So I never really thought about it.”
Heidi Gutman / ABC / Everett Collection
Until she began working with Bruening to help high school students in a film program. “This summer, I went to go visit a dear friend in Colorado and we were just chatting and she asked me, ‘Do you ever think about acting again?’ ” Havins Bruening relays. “And I said, ‘That’s funny you say that because just in the last few months of working with these students, I’m toying with the idea again, but I’m not sure.’ And she said, ‘Well, don’t worry about any of it. Why don’t you just pray about it?’ And they live on this beautiful acreage and the next morning, I walked and had time alone and quiet time with the Lord and put it out there and by the end of the week, Mark [Teschner, GH casting director] and Frank [Valentini, executive producer] called. I have chills even thinking about it. I know saying this story is going to sound very crazy to some, but I was absolutely blown away.”
Havins Bruening was interested in hearing what the duo had to say. “Frank and I got along so well in New York, just because with me crossing over on One Life to Live [in character as Babe between 2003 and 2005] and being in the ABC family, you have a lot of interaction together and we just genuinely liked each other,” she shares. “I loved how he ran his set as a producer. Mark Teschner is absolute gold and I just adore Mark. When they started talking, they were very elusive about what the role was, and then they let me know it was Lulu and that’s where it really caught my attention because it’s such an interesting character.”
After a discussion with Bruening about how they would manage their household if she returned to work, the actress met with the show’s head writers and Valentini. “I just wanted to know where Lulu was pre-blast [that put her in a coma in 2020], where her relationships were, what does the audience love about her? What makes Lulu Lulu?” she explains, adding that she is well aware her predecessors as Lulu, Julie Berman and Emme Rylan, put their own stamp on the character.
“In no way, shape or form do I want to mimic the other two ladies. I’m not trying to be them in any way,” Havins Bruening declares. “Julie’s Julie and Emme’s Emme. Obviously, it’s going to be a more mature version of her and I’m me and I can’t be them. Lulu is a spitfire. She loves her mother, but she’s her father’s daughter. She takes huge chances. I just want to make sure that I’m bringing the essence of who she is.”
She didn’t go to YouTube to check out old episodes of Berman or Rylan. “I didn’t watch clips or anything like that because I didn’t want to try to go that route,” she notes. “Her relationships with the pivotal people in her life is high priority to me. How does she connect with her mother? How is she connecting with her brother [Lucky, played by Jonathan Jackson]? Where is she with Dante [Dominic Zamprogna]; that chemistry and spark has to still be alive.”
Of Zamprogna, Havins Bruening says, “I love him. We clicked right away. He said he looked up on set and had a glimpse of me and he was like, ‘Oh, I was feeling a Julie vibe.’ He’s very sweet.”
Disney/Christine Bartolucci
Havins Bruening was also happy to connect with familiar faces from her Pine Valley days. “I saw Cameron [Mathison, Drew Cain; Ryan Lavery, AMC] and Eva [LaRue, Natalia Ramirez; Maria Santos, AMC],” she reports. “It’s funny, even though it’s been so long, it feels exactly the same. This feels otherworldly; like, in my mind, I’m in New York and I’m in Pine Valley.”
At the time of this interview, she was still waiting to connect with Michael E. Knight (Martin Grey), who played AMC’s Tad Martin, Bruening’s on-screen father and Babe’s stepfather. “Justin’s highly jealous,” she says with a laugh. “I said, ‘Justin, I think Lulu needs a distraction and you need to come on.’ I was trying to lure him in and I could see him kind of considering it and then he was like, ‘But would I get to work with Michael Knight?’ And I’m like, ‘OK, wait a minute, forget me. I can see where my ranking is. I’m like way below Mikey.’ But who doesn’t like Michael Knight? He’s so sweet. I’m excited but no, we haven’t crossed paths, we are related now [Martin is Lulu’s uncle], so we get to play that.”
In the meantime, Bruening is on daddy duty while mom is back in the hair and makeup chair. “Justin is home with the kids,” she says. “He is an amazing dad and husband. He’s on hiatus from Sweet Magnolias so it’s great.”
And she reveals that they’ve expanded their brood in the past few years. “We have four,” Havins Bruening spills. “We’ve got a secret baby. Our oldest daughter is 14 and then our son’s 11 and then we have two more girls, ages eight and four. And that was another factor. I think had it been a year or two ago, I would have had a toddler and I probably would have said, ‘Thank you, but I don’t think I can.’ We involved the older ones and said, ‘Mom’s thinking about this. I just want you to know,’ and they were like, ‘We’re older now. We can be helpful.’ They were so sweet.”
With harmony at home, Havins Bruening is looking forward to her next chapter in daytime. “The writers have written some really fun things,” she enthuses. “We know she’s waking up from a four-year coma, so we’ve got a lot of twists and turns and we hit the ground running. Just being a part of that next Spencer family adventure feels very rewarding. To be able to be a piece of such a massively important family on the daytime canvas feels like an honor. I want to honor what Genie and Anthony built, to continue the story, and just give the audience what they’re wanting as far as Lulu goes.”
