Soap Opera Digest: Let’s start with the biggie and that’s Diane being alive. Her very existence affects a lot of people and story. How long have you thought about bringing her back?
Josh Griffith: Maybe a couple of months.
Digest: That’s it?
Griffith: It grew out of what we were really looking for: a way to solidify the Abbott family, which has sort of splintered into different directions, so we really wanted to bring them back together. We started looking into their history for unfinished business and we thought about bringing in another generation.
Digest: What do you want to accomplish by resurrecting this character?
Griffith: What happened with Diane when she came back [in 2010], she was sort of a different incarnation that Maura West [Ava, GH] brought, who seemed more connected to the Newmans at that time, and then with Nikki being blamed for Diane’s “death”. So, all right, there’s always a way to bring some body back to life and we already had this mystery in mind with Jack and the connection to Keemo that would be the first half of the story, which would then lead Jack to an even bigger mystery. That would be Diane, and bringing her back to the Abbott world and causing conflict with Phyllis. So we decided that was the way to go because that would mean connecting the Abbotts to the Susan Walters version again. From there, everything just fell into place.
Digest: You were banking a lot on Susan being available.
Griffith: Yes, we reached out to Susan and she was thrilled to come back, so we were off and running!
This story is from the April 11, 2022 edition of Soap Opera Digest.
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This story is from the April 11, 2022 edition of Soap Opera Digest.
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