Time flies when you're having fun. Evidently, it also flies when you're watching fun, because it feels like just yesterday that Jacklyn Zeman joined the ABC soap opera as teenage hooker Bobbie Spencer -- but it has officially been forty years since that memorable day.
Fans are still crazy about the character after all this time, which the actress credits partially to the daring storylines told in her heyday that shaped who Bobbie is today.
"It was ballsy [to create the Spencer family and all their problems]," she tells TV Insider. "We're talking about a time when an unmarried couple couldn't check into a hotel without the girl putting on a fake wedding ring. GH was being very racy but, hey, it worked. We were saved from cancelation."
But it wasn't just being part of the wacky Spencer family that made heads turn whenever Bobbie took the screen. It was also the fact that the character was quite a bad girl -- but never obviously so.
"I never saw her [as a villain]," Zeman shares. "Bobbie always had an agenda, but it never came from an evil place. It was always about moving herself forward and making life better for her family, never to hurt anybody. She was all about taking control because her parents were alcoholics and she had no control growing up. But, yeah, some of her choices were horrible! Laura Wright [Carly] and I have some scenes coming up where our characters talk about karma coming back to kick them in the ass. The writers don't forget our history. The audience is going to love it!"
Speaking of history, former GH executive producer Gloria Monty made it when she single-handedly saved the soap from cancellation, a journey that began at about the same time Zeman's Bobbie came to Port Charles.
"Gloria started three or four days after I did. She was great. Really hands-on," the actress says, adding that though the EP was sometimes overbearing and difficult, she was also incredibly compassionate. "Gloria came to work every day with a machete, but you learned to stay out of her way. I remember her coming down to the set one day and getting horribly mad at one of the crew guys, and she called him out in front of 300 people. I went to her office at the end of the day and said, ‘Gloria, if you ever have a problem with me, I would appreciate it if we discussed it privately and quietly, because when that happened today I felt mortified for that man. If you ever do that to me in front of everybody it's not going to work. I will fall apart. I will give you less, not more'... Gloria could be a bully, but she was also a big enough person to say, ‘Oh-kaaaay, Dah-ling, I understand. We'll be fine.'"
To read more about Zeman's GH history, check out TV Insider's interview with the actress here.
Would you like to congratulate Zeman on forty years at GH? What have been your favorite Bobbie moments over the years? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.
