It’s been quite a while since “One Life to Live” was on the air. After its cancellation, some characters crossed over to “General Hospital” until a rights dispute forced ABC to relinquish them, and they were written out of the show in 2013. During that short crossover time, one of the traveling characters was Blair Cramer (Kassie DePaiva). She interacted with Skye Chandler Quartermaine (Robin Christopher) — who’d been on all three ABC soaps, including “All My Children” — as well as her former flame, “OLTL” character Todd Manning (Roger Howarth). Howarth has since played the reformed serial killer Franco Baldwin until he was killed off in 2021 and returned in May of that year as Dr. Austin Gatlin-Holt.
Since Austin is embroiled in a major storyline involving Ava Jerome (Maura West), he probably won’t have time to connect with Blair. DePaiva reprised her role on the September 15 episode, and it turned out that she was the third ex-wife of Martin Grey, who is played by “AMC” alum Michael E. Knight. Thus, she’ll most likely be busy trying to get Martin to marry Lucy Coe (Lynn Herring) because she’s paying him thousands of dollars in alimony, which would end if he were to wed. DePaiva was happy to return to “GH,” and although she doesn’t have scenes with Howarth in the near future, she did bump into him during her recent return and had such nice things to say about her erstwhile co-star.
DePaiva was happy to see her old friend
In an article posted by Soap Opera Digest on October 19, Kassie DePaiva said she was overjoyed when she ran into Roger Howarth on the “General Hospital” set. She stated that although it had been several years since they saw each other, they stayed in contact. “He texted me when I was sick with leukemia, and we’d talked during the first year or so of Covid because somebody asked him to send me a birthday wish on Cameo,” she explained, citing the platform where fans can have celebrities send someone a personalized message. In between playing Franco Baldwin and Austin Gatlin-Holt, Howard had joined the platform, donating all his proceeds to Feeding America. In 2016, DePaiva dealt with leukemia and later breast cancer and is now cancer-free.
She stated that while dealing with her health issues, she and Howarth remained in contact, and he was able to visit her in upstate New York. But with their recent reunion on the set, she exclaimed, “Seeing him again was wonderful, and I’m glad we took pictures!” We couldn’t be happier that the two former castmates have reunited, and we’re hoping that “GH” puts them together once their current storylines have finished. As Blair and Todd, the two were an entertaining couple, and now that he’s playing Austin, it will be interesting to see how that dynamic works out!
