The Storyteller

GH’s Amanda Setton Reflects On Brook Lynn’s Evolution

- Mara Levinsky

Soap Opera Digest: This has been such a significant storyline period for Brook Lynn, who had a starring role in the baby Bailey saga. Did you imagine, when this whole baby ruse began, that it would end up having such emotional heft, and peel back so many of Brook Lynn’s defenses?

Amanda Setton: No! Honestly, when I first came on the show as Brook Lynn, she was self-involved, bratty, getting arrested by Detective Chase. You know, always getting herself into trouble. You could see, I think — or I always hoped the audience could see — a sort of level of “heart of gold” that Brook Lynn did have. But even when she came back on the scene pregnant, or faking a pregnancy as it was, you think she wasn’t doing it for altruistic reasons, but she really was! She was doing it for her father. At the time, though, there was a sort of a devious, scheming, doing-it-for-her-own-reasons, lying [tendency] that kept it all very surface level. She could be pretty bitchy throughout that! I want to say that the turning point for me as an actor with Brook Lynn was the Valentin scenes in the hospital, where I had to just break this man [by telling him Bailey wasn’t his daughter]. I could see that what I had done was breaking this person, and it was so painful and so devastating, and I couldn’t tell him why, I had to just take it all on the chin.

Those scenes were really painful. And after that, there was so much more of Brook Lynn with the baby and moving into the beach house and creating this sort of family with Chase, and it all deepened. This baby really gave her a sense of purpose and a home. She created a home as a result of having this child in her arms.