PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Two “General Hospital” actors have won supporting honors at the Daytime Emmy Awards.
Kelly Thiebaud plays Dr. Britt Westbourne and Jeff Kober portrays Cyrus Renault on the ABC drama. A gleeful Thiebaud won on her first nomination Friday night.
“I cannot believe this. I am so shocked,” she said. “My brother, when I first started acting, he followed my work and he’s like, ’You’re not that good.’ So thank you for giving me something to rub in his face.”
Kober is known for his extensive film and primetime work on such shows as “Sons of Anarchy” and “The Walking Dead.”
“Wow, thank you for making me feel so welcome in daytime. What a trip,” he said. “I love what we get to do for a living, it’s play.”
After two years of pre-taped presentations because of the coronavirus pandemic, daytime returned to honoring its own at nighttime with an in-person ceremony. In 2020, the show went virtual for the first time and last year the audience was limited.
Still, the specter of COVID-19 was felt.
Two nominees from “The Young and the Restless” were forced to bow out. Lead actor nominee Jason Thompson, who plays Billy Abbott, and supporting actress nominee Melissa Ordway, who plays Abby Newman, both said on social media they had tested positive for COVID-19 and would miss the show.
Kevin Frazier and Nischelle Turner of “Entertainment Tonight” co-hosted the 49th annual awards held at the Pasadena Convention Center, where many of the nominees sat at socially distanced cocktail tables and others sat in rows next to each other.
Turner opened the show with a reference to the Supreme Court overturning women’s constitutional protections for abortions earlier Friday. She emphatically told Frazier it was “her choice” to wear her blue gown. The crowd cheered and some women stood up.
Supporting actress nominee Nancy Lee Grahn of “General Hospital” walked the indoor red carpet wearing references to the day’s news. She had a temporary tattoo reading “reproductive freedom” on her chest, the word “choice” on her disc earrings and she carried a black purse with “ban off our bodies” spelled out in rhinestones.
“I dare not go through this process without speaking out about the devastation that I have for what happened today and what a dark day it is for women in this country,” the 66-year-old actor said. “We’re not going to allow this, we’re not going to stand for it.”
