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We’ve got a soap opera shocker, celebrity gossip fans.
Eva LaRue announced late on Monday that she is leaving General Hospital over a year after joining the daytime drama as Natalia Ramirez… the disapproving and homophobic mother of Jacqueline Grace Lopez’s Blaze.
As the actress herself admitted yesterday, the character wasn’t exactly embraced by viewers during her time on screen.
“Eva’s been a dear friend for years and I am so pleased we found an opportunity to work together,” said General Hospital executive producer Frank Valentini in a statement to Entertainment Weekly.
“What originally was meant as a guest star arc turned into a longer and more satisfying arc, in thanks to Eva’s terrific work and chemistry with our cast.
“I was thrilled Eva was available to us in this extended role. I wish her all the best in her upcoming projects.”
LaRue basically said the same thing as this executive while confirming her exit in an interview with Soap Opera Digest.
“I started to feel it in January. They tried to rehabilitate my character and then all of a sudden, I have these scenes in January where, because Natalia had lied about her ex-husband and broken his trust, Sonny was like, ‘We can’t be friends anymore,’” she told the outlet of about when she started to have a feeling Natalia wasn’t working.
“And I thought, ‘Uh-oh, there we go,’ because that [relationship with Sonny] was kind of my character’s only lifeline.”
The veteran actress made her General Hospital debut in February 2024.
“I was originally only supposed to be on the show for a couple of months and it ended up being a much longer run,” said the star, who originally rose to small screen fame as Maria Santos Grey on All My Children.
LaRue added that General Hospital “felt like home” thanks to the many other All My Children alums in the cast.
Still, it was a challenge to redeem Natalia — especially when it came to her love story with Sonny.
“People just weren’t buying it, because they just hated my character so much,” she said on June 30.
“I was so vilified that no matter what [the writers] did, it just wasn’t a solid enough rehabilitation that they were gonna buy me with Sonny. And so when they finally let that idea go, I realized, ‘Okay, I’m probably not much longer for this world.’”
The actress had nothing negative to say about the crew or colleagues or any of the experience on set, it should be emphasized.
“I had a blast at General Hospital. I loved being there and I had a lot of really great scenes and I loved everybody that I got to work with,” she said told Soap Opera Digest.
“It was just an awesome experience, and I was really glad that I got to stay longer than I was supposed to.”