No delivery room at "General Hospital"

Soap opera actress says she was fired for pregnancy.

Published January 13, 2006 3:59PM (EST)

Think it's tough to make it in corporate America as a working mom? Just trying being a soap opera actress; get pregnant, and your bosses kill you, before they fire you.

Kari Wuhrer, an actress who played the role of Reese Marshall on ABC's "General Hospital," is suing ABC Productions and American Broadcasting Companies, the New York Times reported Friday. Wuhrer alleges that the producers iced her character and then fired her last August, because she was pregnant, and that it's a pattern. "Even one whiff that an actress on an ABC daytime soap has conceived a child is enough to have her character killed off the show," Wuhrer's legal complaint states.

ABC won't comment on the case, but the papers that Wuhrer filed said that the network told her that she was being dismissed because she wasn't "sexy" and "she had no chemistry with the character's love interest, Sonny Corinthos."

That's funny, since a pregnancy might seem like the most obvious proof of chemistry between two love interests.


By Katharine Mieszkowski

Katharine Mieszkowski is a senior writer for Salon.

MORE FROM Katharine Mieszkowski


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