As previously reported, the “General Hospital” writing team consisting of former head writer Ron Carlivati, and writers Anna Theresa Cascio, Andrea Archer Compton, Suzanne Flynn, Kate Hall, Elizabeth Korte, Daniel James O’Connor, Elizabeth Page, Jean Passanante, Katherine Schock, Scott Sickles and Chris Van Etten, took home the Writers Guild Award on Saturday, February 13 in the category of Daytime Drama. The soap beat out CBS’ “The Bold and the Beautiful,” the only other series nominated in the category. At press time, Carlivati’s acceptance speech was unavailable. That has since changed.
“I wrote this down just in case, because I really thought ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ was going to win,” said Carlivati at the beginning of his acceptance speech in the Edison Ballroom in New York City. “They told a very powerful and important story about a transgender woman this year. I’m not sure if any of them are here… I don’t think they are, but we share this award with you.”
READ: Ron Carlivati Led ‘GH’ Wins WGA Award For Daytime Drama
While “B&B” submitted material surrounding the reveal of Maya Avant (Karla Mosley) as a transgender female, the ABC soap submitted the April 1, 2015 anniversary episode, which told the origin story of Luke Spencer (Anthony Geary) as never before seen with re-created scenes.
“On ‘General Hospital,’ we told an origin story about one of the most popular characters on daytime television,” began Carlivati after winning the WGA Award. “At the time, the actor who played him told me it was his favorite storyline of his entire 37 year run on the show. Shortly after this, however, he became disenchanted with my writing and for some strange reason refused to acknowledge that we had ever even met, referring to me in interviews only as ‘The Writer.’
“Apparently this was supposed to be some kind of insult, but as I’m sure my fellow writers standing on the stage, and probably most of you in this room, would agree, I consider being called ‘The Writer’ to be a badge of honor. So thank you to him for that, and thank you the Writers Guild for this.”
You’ll recall it was in a July 20, 2015 interview with TV Guide’s Michael Logan where Geary was quoted as saying of his time working under the writing direction of Carlivati and his team, “You don’t need to agree with me. You don’t need to give me my way. I just want to be heard. I think the problems were always more with the writer than with Frank [Valentini, executive producer], although the writer and I have never spoken.”
“We’ve sat at the same table at the Emmys and what not, but he never has anything to say to me,” clarified Geary in his interview with Logan, which contradicted Carlivati’s account of their interactions.
You can watch Carlivati’s full acceptance speech below (beginning at the 2:15 mark).