NIKOLAS AND EMILY
TYLER | NATALIA

A New 'EM' O
By Janet Di Lauro
Soap Opera Weekly
July 27, 2004

GH's Natalia Livingston is enjoying the "new" Emily

Natalia Livingston's (Emily Bowen Quartermaine, General Hospital) soft, whispery voice, sweet smile and perennially positive attitude is the stuff that soap opera heroines are made of. And, in her case, it's the absolute real deal.

"I get some flak about it," admits Livingston. "Cindy Preston (Faith) and Rick Hearst (Ric) always make fun of me. They're like, 'Natty, every tiem we see you, you're smiling. Do you ever get upset about anything?' " So cool, calm and collected is Livingston, that when asked to recall the last time she lost her temper, she has to think about it. Finally, she scrounges up an example - albeit one that goes back over a decade. "Honestly, and you're not going to believe this, the last time I really got angry was when I was 15-1/2 years old," recounts Livingston. "My dad has told me six months before that when I was 15-1/2 he was going to let me start dating. Then I turned 15-1/2, this guy asked me out, but my dad wouldn't let me go. That's when I got angry. I was like, 'You made a promise! You told me when I was 15-1/2 that I could go out on a date! Now this guy has asked me out, and you're not going to let me go?!'"

Father later proved to know best, "I shouldn't have been going out with that guy anyway," concedes Livingston. "So my dad knew what he was talking about."

Livingston's mild-mannered demeanor has paved the way for a kinder, gentler Emily, since she assumed the role in 2003. It's a complete 180 from her predecesoor Amber Tamblyn's edgy, gritty, sometimes sullen portrayal of the orphan-turned-heiress. Livingston insists she was never pressured to resurrect Tamblyn's take on "Em." "The producers told me to try to figure out who the character was, then add my own personality on top of that. That's where the softness has come in. It's my own thing," explains Livingston, who still sees Emily as a force to be reckoned with. "She stickes up for what she believes in and the people she loves. She can be feisty when there's injustice. When I have scenes that let me show that, I add it"

Livingston's softer, gentler Emily came to GH by way of Macon, Georgia, where the former social worker decided to quit her job and head to Hollywood. "I always had acting in the back of my mind," confides Livingston. "I thought, 'Now is the time to try it." So I drove cross country with my mom."

And what better place for Livingston to spend her first night in town than a convent? "My mom was friends with this Guatemalan nun," she says. "I had had many conversations with her over the phone. She told me I could live at the ceonvent. Rent was $348 a month, which is unheard of in L.A. Plus, they provided two meals a day. It sounded great. But then I learned about their 8 p.m. curfew and I thought, 'I'll never be able to go out on a date!' "

The convent's strickt house rules inspried Livingston to find an apartment, pronto. Next came a job in the garden department of the Home Depot, where she was ultimately discovered amid the peat moss and potting soil. My [future] manager came in looking to landscape his front yard," relates Livingston. "I helped him, and we started talking [about acting]. He asked me to come by his office and we've been working together ever since." After some lackluster extra work - "It was nothing to brag about: I had one scene behind Pamela Anderson in V.I.P. and a McDonald's commerical" - Livingston landed her big break on GH. Although, she hadn't a clue about the daytime drill. she was rapidly thrust into tortured heroine mode. Besides a battle with breast cancer, her Emily was caught in a lovers' triangle that ended in suicide, dealt with the "death" of her fiance, Nikolas, and is currently enduring a twisted amnesia plot.

"It's been a little intimidating," confesses Livingston with a laugh. "But it's been such a wonderful experience. I went to my high school reunion last week, and was thinking how much has happened to me over the last year-and-a-half, and how grateful I am. Some days, I go into work for 10 hours and I feel like it's 10 minutes because I enjoy it so much. The storylines have been a great because of the people I've worked with. Chad Brannon (ex-Zander) made me feel so welcome when I first started on the show, and Tyler Christopher (Nikolas) is wonderful."

While Livingston has been juggling leading men on-camera, off-screen she says she's unattached. "I broke up with my boyfriend about a month ago," she confides. "I'm not dating anyone. I'm enjoying the single life right now."

And spending time with friends, many of whom include her GH costars and their significant others. "Tamara Braun (Carly) and I went out last weekend," reports Livingston. Cindy Preston (Faith) and I have gotten to be good friends. We are in this book club with Chad's girlfriend Cheryl, Greg Vaughan's (Lucky) fiancee, Danielle, and pretty much whoever wants to come. We meet once a month, although no one ever reads the whole book except Cindy. She reads it from cover to cover and does extra research on it. It's crazy. We tease her about that, sit around and talk but usually not about the book. We talk about our lives - and guys." As for Emily's "guy," Livingston is eagerly anticipating her character's reunion with Nikolas. "I can't wait," she declares with the enthusiasm of a GH fan. "Did you see the scenes where Nikolas and Emily got together again? When they finally kissed for the first time [since his amnesia]? That was my favorite show of the past year."

Apparently, it created quite a stir at the GH studio. "we had a little audience of people that were watching those scenes on the set," reveals Livingston. "Tyler and I were like, 'What are all these people doing here?' Everybody had come down from the fifth floor [offices] and was watching." She didn't have quite the same audience for her confrontation scenes opposite Catherine Wadkins' Mary, although those were long overdue for fans, too. "They turned out well." Livingston says with pride, adding that it was easy to muster up the fire she needed to face off with the woman who stole Emily's man. Did she have to conjure up the last time she lost her cool for real? "Actually, I did," admits Livingston with a laugh. "I've thought back to that moment a few times."

Grandma... Tell Me 'Bout The Good Ole Days

Relating to Emily's tragic past comes easy to Livingston. "Just because I haven't gotten extremely angry since I was 15 doesn't mean I haven't gone through hardships in my life," shares Livingston.

The event that changed Livingston's life the most was the death of her grandmother, Natalia, "who I was named after," she explains. "She was my mom's mom. The sweetest, kindest, most elegant lady. She lived with us for five years before she died of colon cancer. I was there on the day she died. It was the saddest day of my life." While taping Lila's funeral scenes on GH, Livingston couldn't help reflecting back to those memories. "Emily was pretty heavily involved in everything that was going on. Just reading over that script made me think about my own grandmother and how close Iwas with her," notes Livingston. "We had a lot of fun together. I used to take her out for breakfast. We'd go the mall, sit and talk, and watch people go by. She used to call it 'rubbernecking.' She played a big part in what I'm doing today. My grandmother definitely gave me an appreciation for the arts, as did my mom and my dad. She gave me a lot of confidence. She told me, 'Whatever you want to do, you can do it.'"