‘General Hospital’: How Did Eden McCoy Really Feel About Playing a Young Carly in Those Flashbacks

General Hospital is known for having one of the most well-received teenage groups on soap operas. One of these actors is Eden McCoy, who plays Josslyn Jacks. A few months ago on the show, McCoy portrayed her on-screen mother, Carly Corinthos (Laura Wright), in flashbacks. She talked about this experience in an interview.

Eden McCoy plays Josslyn Jacks on ‘General Hospital’

The character of Josslyn Jacks was born on the show in 2009. The character is the third child of Carly Corinthos and the only child she has with Jasper “Jax” Jacks. McCoy has portrayed the character since 2015 when Josslyn was rapidly aged by the writers. Jacks has played the character from her tween years up to becoming a teenager.

So far, the character’s storylines have revolved around her romance with Oscar Nero. She was his girlfriend and mourned him when he passed away after battling an illness. She has also had involvement in the storyline surrounding her adoptive aunt, Nelle Benson, who was trying to take down her Carly and her brother Michael. This is a storyline that she is still involved with on the show and she has a bitter feud with Benson.

Outside of that, a lot of her time on the show has been about her friendships with Cameron Webber, Trina Robinson, and Dev Cersi.

Briefly, she stepped into the role of her on-screen mother

In an interview earlier this year with Michael Fairman TV, McCoy talked about the character of Josslyn, some of the plotlines on the show, and portraying Carly in flashbacks of the character’s younger years.

The actress says that playing Carly has been one of her favorite experiences on the show. “It was this perfectly gift-wrapped opportunity to get to know my fellow castmates and dive into a whole other character,” she said in part. ‘Everyone was so involved in that episode. Look at the set design, for one thing. You can totally tell that it transported us into the 90s.  Everyone did an amazing job with that style of architecture ….everybody had been researching it …everybody pretty much except for me as I lived through the 90s!”  

McCoy was also anticipating what Wright would have to say about her performance. “I’m super excited to see what she has to say about it,” she’s said. “Frank Valentini and I were discussing it day-of taping. We were kind of dissecting Laura’s mannerisms so that I could kind of plug them into my performance. We used when Laura as Carly tucks her hair behind her ear, and Frank was like, ‘Oh, yeah!  Do that!’  I’ve grown up with Laura, and watching her, and acting against her, and people clearly compare us all the time and are like, ‘That’s insane.  Do you try to do that on purpose?’ It’s like, ‘No, I’ve just been with her since I was 12, almost every day.’”

She was also asked about the relationship that Josslyn has with her “aunt” Nelle. “I would love to slap Nelle again,” she joked. “Chloe [Lanier] is one of my closest friends on that set.  Even though we haven’t worked together as much as we used to, we are still very close, and I learned a lot from her.  Scenes with her are always so juicy.”

General Hospital airs weekdays on ABC.