Carly Corinthos - Character Development

Character Development

Carly represents a modern archetype in soap opera, of mysterious outsiders with secret blood ties to core characters. To drive the plot forward, they often ingratiate themselves to their birth parent's family, only to cause destructive havoc later on, as revenge for their perceived abandonment. Her predecessors in this can be seen first in Donna Ludlow of EastEnders, and then Kendall Hart of All My Children. In 1999, writer Patrick Mulcahey noted that the character of Carly had been somewhat of a work in progress at first. "Worse yet, we the writers didn't really know what Carly was supposed to be," he said. "That may sound like a horrifying confession, but in daytime, a successful character is always a collaboration between the writers and the actor." Mulcahey said the writers discussed who they felt Carly, as a character, is and that "the actor finds certain other decisions have to be made and makes them, sparks fly between the actor and another actor, we see what's happening on-screen and start playing around with it in the writing- that's how a character takes shape". He further stated:

Carly was different. We were afraid of her. I started right around the time Sarah did, but it's my understanding that there was quite a hullabaloo about Carly before she was ever cast. I was told a writer (the one I think I replaced) had even quit over it. The issue was this: Carly was coming to Port Charles for the purpose of haunting Bobbie and making her life miserable, out of supposed anger at having been 'abandoned' by her. But of course, she wasn't abandoned, she was given up for adoption, and the network and producers were rightly concerned that we might be 'sending the message' (that phrase that soap writers dread) either that adopted children were hateful and full of rage, or that their adoptive parents were neglectful or otherwise inadequate enough to instill this smoldering resentment of being adopted in their kids... I need not go on. The pitfalls are obvious, and I imagine Bob promised Wendy and ABC that we had no intention of falling into them.