I would recast Maxie soon (with Molly Burnett or whoever) simply to send a message to Kirsten. This is not a guaranteed forever job and she has to get well. I'd welcome KS back someday, but IMO that's not any time soon.

More importantly, while a recast can appear on recurring occasionally for holidays, etc. I would not bring Maxie back on contract or in major story any time soon. I think the character is tired and needs a rest (I also think what @titan1978 has said Lulu is very true, and she can do have more fun on her own or with others). Mac and Felicia are more than enough to hold down the family front and be there for the kids like Georgie - I consider them indispensable as foundation characters for the reasons titan also mentioned re: Felicia - and Serena Baldwin can take Maxie's place at Deception. It's time for a change.

Edited Saturday at 08:52 PM1 day by Vee

8 hours ago, Vee said:

I would recast Maxie soon (with Molly Burnett or whoever) simply to send a message to Kirsten. This is not a guaranteed forever job and she has to get well.

I agree.

I think the show needs to bite the bullet and close the book on KS and move on. In the real world, she would be canned a long time ago and it's time for the show to move on and find another Maxie.

Yeah, I don’t understand why FV and team hold her in such high regard to think this role is somehow unrecastable on a permanent basis.

Edited 22 hours ago22 hr by BetterForgotten

1 hour ago, BetterForgotten said:

Yeah, I don’t understand why FV and team hold her in such high regard to think this role is somehow unrecastable on a permanent basis.

I don't believe FV thinks Maxie is unrecastable or even holds Kirsten in a high regard as an actress. I think Frank has a soft spot for her as a person and the hope was KS would get her ish together if she has a job and it appeared to work for certain periods of time. Once Kirsten started making the strange claims publicly and her restraining order came out it was difficult for Frank to keep protecting her. He let her go very quietly and if Kirsten had made a brief statement saying she was leaving GH to focus on her health and family she probably would be welcomed back.

Anyway, I think most of us on here would easily accept a recast. It was just a bad situation for Jen Lilley and she got so much backlash that FV might be hesitant to recast in a permanent capacity. KS fans were brutal back then and there is still a faction of them now accusing BB and his wife of stealing her child. We also don't truly know how serious KS's issues are and if a recast would send her spiraling even further.

Idk, I get the feeling we are going to get one off hand comment saying Spinelli and Maxie moved with Georgie and the baby. I assume GH will keep James.

3 hours ago, carolineg said:

Idk, I get the feeling we are going to get one off hand comment saying Spinelli and Maxie moved with Georgie and the baby.

Better that, I guess, than, "I still can't believe how Spinelli, Maxie and the kids all died in that plane crash!"

FV can be both ice cold and/or loyal to a fault, depending on the situation or person. We've seen it in many cases, starting obviously with Howarth and Easton. But even at OLTL he and the cast/crew (particularly Kathy Brier and Fiona Hutchison) went above and beyond for Nathaniel Marston BTS due to his own issues before and after he was first let go and rehired in 2003, until it became impossible to protect him in 2007. Kirsten is not the first.

Edited 15 hours ago15 hr by Vee

Frank has been extremely supportive of her for over a decade now. I believe a lot of people on GH have been treating Kirsten with kid gloves for years and keeping a lot of things out of the press-even Barash.

Unless Kirsten's recent comments about her break ins and social media hacks pushed Frank over the limit, I doubt we will see a recast. I obviously could be wrong though. Maxie and Spinelli have been on a vacation for about 3 months and it's hardly mentioned lol.

Just now, carolineg said:

Unless Kirsten's recent comments about her break ins and social media hacks pushed Frank over the limit, I doubt we will see a recast.

I think we may soon. When the actor situation becomes untenable and goes public (as it has here same with Haley Pullos, Tyler or NM) Frank ultimately recasts. We'll see.

Edited 14 hours ago14 hr by Vee

At the end of the day, Frank Valentini has to decide whether he's everyone's boss or friend. He can't be both.

Edited 14 hours ago14 hr by Khan

What's interesting is to contrast this side of him against the many people at both shows who have said Frank casually, easily iced them out or otherwise screwed them over lol. But we all are more than one kind of human.

Edited 14 hours ago14 hr by Vee

6 minutes ago, Vee said:

I think we may soon. When the actor situation becomes untenable and goes public (as it has here same with Haley Pullos, Tyler or NM) Frank ultimately recasts. We'll see.

That is a valid point. How did Tyler leave the last time? Someone refresh my memory.

I feel like the show has been slowly phasing Maxie out. There should be a Maxie in some form for the Cassius reveal though so you very well could be correct.

Frank doesn't seem like an evil man to me just very petty. For whatever reasons there seems to be his favorites and people he loathes. It doesn't seem like there is a ton of in-between there for him.

34 minutes ago, carolineg said:

That is a valid point. How did Tyler leave the last time? Someone refresh my memory.

Frank doesn't seem like an evil man to me just very petty. For whatever reasons there seems to be his favorites and people he loathes. It doesn't seem like there is a ton of in-between there for him.

Officially it was contract stuff but I believe Tyler's issues were already quite real at GH again by that point. There were many rumors in the last 20 years about him, same as Kirsten. A year or two later he got carted out of DAYS on a stretcher (allegedly), which did go public, and that was it for his career. Nikolas was then finally recast.

I don't think FV is an evil guy either. We all have multitudes to us, and I've heard of both his great generosity and kindness and the absolutely cold side to him, or a lot of the pettiness you mention lol. But I also think many people actually fall between extremes of love and loathe for him - much like someone like Melissa Archer in the mid-2000s at contract time, where he casually told her to just take a lowball offer and not bother leaving for LA because she'd never make it (and maybe that relationship warmed again later, who knows), I suspect it's just that many actors don't engender much of his consideration when they do fall into that middle space. And then he'll still turn around and do some kindness we hear about all the time at GH. You just never know. But we can say that for most of humanity.

Edited 11 hours ago11 hr by Vee

8 hours ago, BetterForgotten said:

Yeah, I don’t understand why FV and team hold her in such high regard to think this role is somehow unrecastable on a permanent basis.

I mean Frank did hold out for Chad Duell...until he couldn't. And it worked out because Rory Gibson is a find.

Frank did not wait long on Chad, let's be real. IIRC I think it may have miffed Chad. I wasn't totally surprised to hear Frank allegedly changed his tune once Chad indicated he wanted to be gone well over a year. I think if not for that FV might've held the role in reserve out of loyalty, which in hindsight would've been a mistake. And I was someone who initially wanted to wait a year or two before recasting.

OTOH Michael has no major new love interest right now despite the recast being a smash success and is wandering around with a dayplayer, which makes me wonder what is going on there after a year. I don't think FV is dumb enough to want to handicap RG, but some story priority is out of whack nonetheless.

Edited 13 hours ago13 hr by Vee