2025 Erika Reflects
Soap Opera Digest, November 5, 2025
General Hospital Comings & Goings: Erika Slezak Reflects On Ronnie Run On Eve of Final Episode (Excl) Link
Ronnie Bard, we hardly knew ye! Daytime Emmy-winning One Life to Live legend Erika Slezak (ex-Victoria Lord) wraps up her whirlwind trip to Port Charles on Thursday, November 6, when Monica’s long-lost little sister heads back to North Carolina. Soap Opera Digest caught up with the star, who is back home in Connecticut after spending three busy weeks on the set of General Hospital, to reflect on her run, her many warm reunions on and off the set, and to answer the million-dollar question: Would she return for another stint?
The Simple Life
Slezak spent over four decades in the role of Victoria, which she assumed in 1971 and played through to OLTL’s final episode in 2012, then reprised on its short-lived Internet reboot in 2013. But even though she’d spent a dozen years away from the world of daytime, fans made it known to Slezak just how much she had been missed. “I think it was lovely,” she says of viewer reaction to her GH casting. “I’ve had so many letters, emails and texts from people who so enjoy seeing me back on the screen, even though I’m not playing Victoria, I’m playing somebody completely different from her. People have been so charming and so lovely and so nice — and apparently they really enjoyed it, which I’m delighted about, really.”
That Ronnie was so unlike Viki, who by no means had an idyllic childhood but was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, “was the challenge for me,” muses Slezak. “I’ve never played anybody like Ronnie… She’s just a hardworking woman who literally had to make her own way in life, because Monica sort of turned her back on her when she got out of foster care.” While Monica was taken in by Gail Baldwin, who put her through medical school, Ronnie had to go it alone. Notes Slezak, “At 16, she’s out in the world by herself. She’s got to get a job, she has to make a living, she has to find a place to live. She started work as a waitress and decided she liked it and never left it; she never aspired to anything else, except that she knew she was smart and she wanted to learn more, so she went to community college and she essentially educated herself. She wasn’t stupid, but she never had the advantages of a rich life. And I’ve never played anyone who was — and I mean this in a good way — as simple as Ronnie, who’s just worked hard her whole life. So, it was a terrific opportunity for me and I’m very, very grateful and glad that the audience accepted her and that our former One Life to Live viewers tuned in and enjoyed seeing me in a completely different role.”
Talent Show
For Slezak, the opportunity to go toe to toe with Ronnie’s chief sparring partner, Jane Elliot (Tracy), was the strongest incentive to sign on GH in the first place. “When Frank [Valentini, GH’s executive producer, who had held that position at OLTL] called me and asked me to do this [and] said I’d be working primarily with Jane Elliot, I went, ‘Yes! Okay, I’ll do it!'” she recalls. “I mean, that’s how simple it was because I’ve watched Jane for years and I’m still amazed at how good she is, how interesting she is, how she can twist a simple sentence into a whole lifetime. She’s amazing!”
When Ronnie wasn’t trading barbs with Tracy, she found time to interact with other legendary members of the canvas, as well. “They put me together with pretty much every major longtime character on the show,” Slezak marvels. “When I found out that I was going to be working with Maurice [Benard, Sonny], I thought, ‘What the hell is she going to say to Sonny? And then it turned out to be so sweet, and it showed a side of Sonny that I think not too many people see,” she notes of the mob boss. “He was so nice and straightforward and pleasant and free to talk to somebody who knew nothing about his past or his business or anything, and it was a delightful change. He said to me after we finished the scene, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if they made us friends?’ But then I never worked with him again, unfortunately.”
Ronnie’s brief encounter with Laura, played by Genie Francis, was another highlight for Slezak. “It was almost the end by the time I got to work with her and I kept thinking, ‘Where the hell is Genie?’ Because I was in her dressing room the whole time,” Slezak explains. “And then they said, ‘She’s coming tomorrow! And when I finally got to work with her, it was wonderful, because I hadn’t seen Genie since we were backstage at The View [years ago]. She was wonderful, and again, so nice.”
Then there’s Michael E. Knight, whose Martin was so hungry for vengeance against Tracy that he altered Monica’s will to make it appear as though she was leaving the Quartermaine house to Ronnie. Slezak has known Knight for years, as he starred on another ABC Daytime show, All My Children, as Tad Martin for much of the time she was on OLTL and was once married to Slezak’s co-star, Catherine Hickland (ex-Lindsay). “I had never worked with Michael before, and he was wonderful. Wonderful!” she proclaims. “And a really good villain because he didn’t appear to be a villain, ever, at least not to me! He’s terrific — and what a handsome guy with that gorgeous white hair!”
Behind the scenes, Slezak enjoyed getting to know other cast members, even ones she didn’t share scenes with. “Everybody was so nice! People that I didn’t work with, I would sort of sit in the green room and talk with if I had five minutes. I chatted with Cameron Mathison [Drew] — we did have a lot of scenes and he was wonderful, absolutely wonderful. And no, I don’t know who shot Drew!” she teases. “I still don’t know! People keep calling me, writing me — ‘Who shot Drew?’ My sister called me: ‘Who shot Drew? Did you shoot him?’ I said, ‘How can I shoot him? I wasn’t even in town [laughs]!'”
All’s Well That Ends Well
Ronnie’s storyline arc began its wrap-up when Martin’s scheme was exposed, as was Monica’s real will, which dictated that the house go to Tracy and that Ronnie be granted the funds to purchase a home in her beloved Durham, North Carolina. The scenes called for high emotion, but, as Slezak winks, “I never had any problem with emotional scenes! But I’m glad it happened the way it did and that Martin finally got his comeuppance. It was just terrific, with Tracy barreling in at the end. It was my favorite line when [the Quartermaines] said to Tracy, ‘Have you read the will?’ Because she found the real will, and Tracy said, ‘No, I was too busy breaking the laws of physics to get here!’ It’s just a great line. I said [to Elliot], ‘I love that line. You should keep saying it over and over again [laughs]!'”
Slezak feels that she was able to get into the groove at GH over the course of her time there. “There are wonderful actors everywhere [on the show] — really, really good,” she muses. “And you have to pull up your A game when you work with people like that! I was a little nervous about that, because I hadn’t done it [in years]. I said, ‘That part of my brain that memorizes easily hasn’t been used in 12, 13 years!’ And for a while, it was touch and go. ‘Do I remember all of this now? Can I remember all of this now?’ The first couple of days were a little tricky, and then I kind of got back into the swing of it.”
Does that mean she would do it all over again and make a Port Charles comeback sometime down the line? “Yes, I would,” she nods, saying of her time on GH, “It was delightful, it was terrific, it was a pleasure. It was different every day, which was unusual for me because Victoria was Victoria all the time. Yes, she was sometimes crazy, sometimes [her alternate personalities] Niki and Tori and Jean and all the others, but she was always Victoria! Ronnie grew through this whole process, and learned — and yes, I would be open to coming back.”