Earlier this week, The Young and the Restless three-time Daytime Emmy winner, Michelle Stafford learned she was once again a Daytime Emmy nominee for her portrayal of  Phyllis Summer, when on Monday on Entertainment Tonight, her name was announced in the Lead Performance in a Daytime Drama Series – Actress for the upcoming 53rd annual Daytime Emmy Awards.

This marks the 14th nomination for Michelle, who previously won as Lead Actress in 2024 and Supporting Actress in both 1997 and 2004. This year, Michelle finds herself in great company alongside Beyond the Gates stars, Tamara Tunie (Anita) and Karla Mosley (Dani), Days of Our Lives’, Stacy Haiduk (Kristen) and The Bold and the Beautiful’s Heather Tom (Katie).

Michelle appeared on the Michael Fairman Channel’s 12th annual Daytime Emmy Nomination special on Tuesday night, July 14 where she shared her thoughts on her nominated reel, the complexity of playing an intense character such as Phyllis, and being thrilled for several of her co-stars who also landed nominations including, Eric Braeden (Victor), Christian LeBlanc (Michael) and Michael Graziadei (Daniel).

Photo: JPI

MICHELLE STAFFORD’S CHOICE OF SCENES

Choosing a reel can often be a daunting task, but over the last few years, Michele has gotten to play an array of emotions and major scenes. She revealed what she chose this time for the Emmy contest.

“I really like that Phyllis is all over the place and wild and wooly. So, the scenes I submitted were the aftermath of being abducted with Sharon (Sharon Case) in the abandoned psychiatric hospital, where Phyllis is kind of losing her mind and when she was having panic attacks. I always love it when you can see into the character’s soul. I love those shows. I also had one show like that this year with Michael Damian (Danny), where after she crashes Christine’s (Lauralee Bell) bachelorette party and Danny’s bachelor party. She has a conversation with him and it’s really lovely. It’s at the GCAC bar and Phyllis walks up to Danny.”

Photo: JPI

PARTY CRASHER

“I thought it was funny that she crashes both parties and in one of them she walks in and says, ‘What kind of party is this?’ Bryton James (Devon) and Sean Dominic (Nate) and Michael Damian are there and she’s talking to Michael Baldwin (Christian LeBlanc) and says, ‘What kind of party is this?’ And I added in, ‘There aren’t even strippers!’  I didn’t include that line in the reel, but that’s why I was laughing,” explained Stafford.

As to how on earth she plays such a raw and complex character day in and day out, Michelle explained it really is a team effort. “Phyllis is very complex and it’s not me, it’s a collaborative endeavor,” says Michelle. “It’s the way the director directs it, and it’s definitely the writing. It’s definitely the viewpoint of Josh Griffith (head writer) that he had had of the character in the last four years that has been really, and I’ve said this before, like Phyllis is hanging from a cliff every day.”

SHARING THE SCREEN WITH ERIC BRAEDEN

In 2026, (which is not eligible till the 2027 Daytime Emmys), Phyllis had been going toe to toe with the might Victor Newman since she acquired his company much to his chagrin, when she initially outsmarted everybody.  Stafford says the story had a specific point to her. “The whole taking over the company, I did that for the women out there. A lot of those speeches Phyllis gave, I was like, ‘You know what? I am doing it for the ladies who are watching’. The Newmans and especially Victor (Eric Braeden) have been just a tyrant in business. Why can’t Phyllis be one too? That is a very profound statement, and something that women in business can relate to.”

While getting an Emmy nomination might feel like old hat so some, not Michelle, who shares she never takes the acknowledgment for granted. “I am always surprised by the nomination. I kind of find it to be enjoyable to put a reel together, even though, like most of the time I’m going, ‘Oh, God. I missed that beat, I should have prepared.’  So, I’m criticizing my work. But in the grand scheme, it’s a fun time. I love helping other people with their reels, too.”

Photo: JPI

HAPPY FOR HER EMMY-NOMINATED CO-STARS

Michelle’s scene partners also scored Daytime Emmy nominations with Eric Braeden and Christian LeBlanc scoring Lead Performance in a Daytime Drama Series – Actor nods, while her TV son, Michael Graziadei (Daniel) landed a nomination in the Outstanding Supporting Actor category.

“I’m so happy that both Eric Braeden and Christian LeBlanc were nominated for Lead Actor. Eric is very good and working with him so closely this year has been a really fun experience. As for Michael Graziadei, I love the thing that we created (as mother and son). I just love it. I love that she’s so inappropriate with her son.  love that she thinks his playing guitar is the most ridiculous thing to want to do. I love all the little nuances in our on-screen relationship.”

53rd ANNUAL DAYTIME EMMY CEREMONY INFO

The 53rd annual Daytime Emmys will be handed out in ceremonies on October 30 at the Hollywood Palladium in Hollywood, California and current plans are it to stream on watch.theemmys.tv and its associated apps.

Now below, you can catch the replay of the Michael Fairman Channel’s Daytime Emmy Nominations Special where you can scroll to the interview with Michelle at the 2:01:15 mark during the live broadcast.

Then, let us know. What do you think of the scenes Michelle chose that landed her a Lead Actress nomination? Did you enjoy the story where Phyllis took over Victor’s company? Share your thoughts via the comment section.

When the nominations were announced for the 53rd annual Daytime Emmy Awards earlier this week, General Hospital fans were thrilled to see Amanda Setton’s name as one of this year’s Outstanding Supporting Actress nominees.

It marks the first time in her career that she has ever been nominated. Setton has played Brook Lynn Quartermaine since 2019. Soap viewers first saw her in the role of Kimberly Andrews on One Life to Live during her run from 2009-2011.

Amanda received her Daytime Emmy nomination for her emotional turn as Brook Lynn learned she had been lied to by her mother, Lois Cerullo (Rena Sofer) for years, after giving up her baby for adoption as a teen. Little did she know she had a secret son living with her this whole time at the Quartermaine mansion in Gio Palmieri (Giovanni Mazza).

Photo: ABC

During an exclusive conversation live on Tuesday night, July 14, during the Michael Fairman Channel’s annual Daytime Emmy Nominations Special, she discussed her reaction to the news, her nominated reel and her GH co-stars.

GOING FOR EMMY GOLD

Setton explained how she found out she was a Emmy nominee! “Frank Valentini called me, our boss. It was such a beautiful moving moment. I’ve known Frank for 20 years and to share this with him, I’m indebted to him on a lot of levels. I was in the car with my husband. We were going for a hike. We got away for just a couple days, just the two of us. It was early in the morning and to share that moment with Frank, to share that moment with my husband, it was the best. We cried and I’m just so grateful.”

The Supporting Actress nominee shared what scenes she submitted: “My reel was obviously about the Gio storyline. It started with the scenes with Lulu (Alexa Havins) and shout out to Alexa! She’s the best. It’s when I first find out that she knows and that I had boy. Then, begging her not to tell Dante (Dominic Zamprogna) and just to leave it alone, then into the scenes with Rena Sofer, shout out to her! She is the best. I love her. I spoke to her today. She deserved to also be nominated. They are the scenes right after I find out at the Nurses’ Ball, and right after Brooklyn finds out that Gio is her son, not her cousin. Then my reel ended with the scene with Gio in the kitchen when Brook Lynn’s first sees him after the Nurses’ Ball and she says, ‘We can work this out,’ and he’s like, ‘No, we can’t,” and he walks away. It was an amazing story and kudos to the writers.”

Photo: ABC

CHOOSING THE RIGHT SCENES

It is always important in the Emmy game to put together a submission, so that someone who doesn’t watch the show day to day, can grasp the story of what’s happening to your character. Setton explained how she went about assembling the choices for her scenes. “Between Michelle Henry (producer, GH) and Frank, they said, ‘You need to tell the story. Find the scenes that tell the story.” Once I did it was clear to all of us, the story has been told,” shared Amanda.

“Anyone who’s watching this reel can get a feel for the intensity of the story. I think after even the first scene where you’re just like, ‘Wait a minute! This girl had a baby? She didn’t know if it was a boy or girl?’ Now this nemesis of her wants to … ‘What’s happening? What’s going on? And then the mom knew the story? ‘ So by the end, your heart’s just broken for this girl.”

Initially, Amanda like the viewers were trying to figure out how GH would make sense of the story, where suddenly years later we find out Brook Lynn got pregnant at summer camp by Dante! Setton said, “Once they (the writers) started building it out and you saw all the different relationships playing out between her and her mother, her and Dante, her and Lulu, her and Gio, her and her husband Chase (Josh Swickard), even Tracy (Jane Elliot), and then the fallout of all of it, it just touched so many characters on the canvas. I think it was like a huge juicy burger for the fans to just take a big bite.”

Photo: ABC

AMANDA SETTON TALKS ON HER TV SON GIOVANNI MAZZA

In addition to Amanda, both Giovanni Mazza and Braedyn Bruner (Emma) landed their first ever nominations in the Emerging Talent category. Setton shared how she and Mazza have developed such a close bond.

“Gio and I are super close. Right from the start, we just hit it off.  He is such a delight. He’s so hardworking. He’s such an eager learner. He’s always looking to be better. He always wants to grow. That’s a huge testament to his work ethic,” explains Amanda. “He’s an amazing person, and over the last couple of years, we’ve had many deep conversations about work, about life, perspective, gratitude, values, a lot of different deep things. I could not be more thrilled for Gio and this moment for him. It is well deserved. He has worked so hard for it.  I really hope he wins. Although, I also love Braedyn!”

One of the most unforgettable moments of 2025 in the soaps is when Gio takes to the Nurses’ Ball stage after overhearing Lulu and Lois talk that he is the biological son of Brook Lynn and Dante. Ready to begin to play his violin, he smashes it pieces and storms off. Setton was in the scene and recalls, “That was wild. He did such a great job with that. That is not an easy moment to hit, pun intended. He nailed it.”

Photo: ABC

THE CONNECTION WITH JANE ELLIOT

On General Hospital, Brook Lynn is close with her ‘Granny,” the one and only Tracy Quartermaine, and in real life Amanda is very close with Jane Elliot, with whom she was able to share the news of her nomination. “First of all, this woman has become one of my closest friends.”

Amanda adds, I’m not exaggerating. I am confident to say she would say the same. We’ve become really close friends outside of work. We speak, almost every day.  We just went out to lunch last week. She’s become such a close person in my life over these last few years.  She’s such a leader. Jane’s a really special person in my life after my family. I wanted to share the news of this nomination with her and she was over the moon.”

HARD WORK PAID OFF

Getting a pat on the back from her peers is one of the more touching moments in Amanda’s career, as she explains: “I have to say we’re in the daytime world, so for us it feels so wonderful and so rich. But in the landscape of the entertainment industry, in daytime, we’re in the trenches. We work really hard. We have a ton of pages. We have a ton of really high stakes, dramatic work to try to do in a grounded, authentic way, continuously every day on television. Not that it’s thankless, because thank God we are employed actors on a network TV show, and we are also grateful. But, I’m not going to lie, and say it doesn’t feel good to just get a little ‘thank you’ or like a little, ‘I see your work.’ It feels fulfilling.”

You can check out the full live interview with Amanda Setton at the 2:24:26 mark during the Daytime Emmy Nominations Special Live below, which featured 13 newly-nominated actors sharing their reactions and what they submitted for their reels the landed them a nomination at the upcoming 53rd annual Daytime Emmy Awards.

So, are you happy for Amanda that she finally secured her first ever Daytime Emmy nomination? Do you think she is one of the frontrunners for the gold for Outstanding Supporting Actress based on the emotional tale of Brook Lynn’s journey to learning she had a son and it was Gio Palmieri? Let us know your thoughts via the comment section.

WSB Director Ross Cullum’s (Andrew Hawkes) reign of terror came to an end last week on the July 2 episode of ABC’s General Hospital, after WSB agent Josslyn Jacks (Eden McCoy) shot him dead. That ended the run of Andrew Hawkes who will go down for his portrayal of one of the ruthless, bad guys in the soaps in a very long time.

Just look at a partial laundry list of his crimes: stabbing Marco Rios (Adrian Anchondo) brutally to his death, gaslighting Anna Devane (Finola Hughes) to where he was held captive and then was sent to mental institution in France, attempting to kill WSB Bureau Chief, Jack Brennan (Chris McKenna), by tying him to his hospital bed at Turning Woods, putting a gas mask on it and making him breathe a full tank of carbon monoxide.

How about being the person responsible for the penthouse fire targeting Sonny (Maurice Benard) that instead got Michael (then Chad Duell, now Rory Gibson) burned so badly he had to be sent away to a clinic in Germany, and then there is the matter of lying to Britt Westbourne (Kelly Thiebaud) for years, that she never had Huntington’s disease, instead she was injecting herself with saline, until near the end of his life, he had put poison in the vials of her medication, and let’s not forget taking a weaponized baton and attempting to beat the life out of Jason Morgan (Steve Burton) and kill him, till Cullum was stopped by shots to his back fired by Rocco Falconeri (Finn Carr).

Photo: ABC

HOW CULLUM TURNED INTO A RUTHLESS MASTERMIND AND KILLER REVEALED

This week, Andrew Hawkes participated in a livestream chat on You Tube’s Michael Fairman Channel where he touched on many subjects of his six-month run as Cullum. One of the more intriguing moments came when Hawkes explained in-depth for the first time what drove Cullum to become a double agent, and to become this heinous of a man.  While it was never given to him by the soap opera, as an actor it is always helpful to fill in the blanks for yourself to help with your performance and the “why” a character is behaving the way they are.

Andrew explained, “This has nothing to do with the writers, or anything that anybody ever said, because we don’t get that backstory on Cullum, but I’ll let you in on a little secret. The reason why Cullum is so single-minded and ruthless is because he was on a job, did his job, which was taking out a high ranking government official in a foreign country. Then, he was turned out by the WSB, locked out of getting back to the United States, and therefore missed holding his daughter who died of leukemia because they froze everything.”

Photo: ABC

“Cullum had no health insurance, Cullum had no money, Cullum had no anything”, continued Hawkes. “What I’ve done with Cullum is he’s coming back to rip everything to shreds from the inside out. So, that was my secret. It’s much more detailed than that. Being a parent is so personal, and  Cullum could not get to his child in her time of greatest need, and he couldn’t do anything because the WSB turned on him. They wouldn’t bring him from out of the cold.”

HEROES AND VILLAINS

Hawkes added, “I played it as I played it, and I am not trying to make it about these mitigating circumstances. It’s just an example of why this guy is so full of rage and violence and that was what I was trying to do as that character is as I said, destroy everything from the inside out.”

On TV, in the movies or on the stage there are usually heroes and villains to every story.  Hawkes explains more on what caused Cullum’s vendetta with the world, “It’s a gasket being blown in your brain plus trauma. I heard somebody talking about what’s the difference between a hero and a villain. A hero says, ‘the world hurt me, and I don’t want to hurt anybody else.’ A villain says, ‘the world hurts me and I’m going to hurt the world.’ So, it’s a very fine distinction.”

Photo: ABC

MEETING JOHN OLIVER AND HIS PERFORMANCE AS Z

In addition, Andrew spoke on his last day of shooting and getting to meet guest star, John Oliver and how impressed he was with his performances, even though he, personally, didn’t get to share any spoken screen-time with the late night Emmy-nominated talk show host.

“I did meet him and talk to him, and when I was down on the ground (after Cullum was shot) I was going, ‘Wow, I’m done.’ I don’t have to sweat anything more today. But he came through, and I’ve been a fan of his for a long time and he was so cool and so prepared. I think he’s amazing. I was like, if you never knew this actor and watched him on GH, he’s just fascination to watch. He’s just so committed. I get the biggest kick out of it, and I hope they keep bringing him back.”

Photo ABC

FINDING OUT CASSIUS HAD LIVED

Hawkes admitted, “I thought Z was only in for one episode/day, but then I found out all the other stuff from watching the show that he had scenes with Carly (Laura Wright) and and then Cassius (Ryan Paevey). I didn’t even know that Cassius wasn’t dead. Of course, Ryan and I had talked a lot and it was the end of his contract and he was leaving the show, but I didn’t know that Cassius had lived through it.”

“As for John Oliver, it’s not easy walking in there with all these incredible professionals being like, “we’ve done it for a long time.” I mean, luckily he has his own show and it’s him talking for 30 minutes. He put in the work. The first behavior, you really see of him is him walking. And then, the way he just pulls out his gun and casually caps the guy on the ground who’s going try to shoot him was just the coolest. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with him, but he was gracious and kind and cool, and you couldn’t ask for a better scene partner.

In case you missed our conversation with Andrew Hawkes on the Michael Fairman Channel, you can check it out below.

Now, let us know, what did you think of the incredible backstory that Andrew creating for himself to rationalize and play all the scenes and nefarious activities of WSB Director, Ross Cullum? What did you think of his final moments on GH in the shootout with Josslyn and Cassius shortly before Z arrived? Let us know via the comment section below.