Finola Hughes Talks Intense ‘General Hospital’ & ‘Y&R’ Rivalry on ‘Celebrity Family Feud’ (VIDEO)

A battle of the network soap stars is set to unfold on July 31 when the casts of General Hospital and The Young and the Restless face off on Celebrity Family Feud.

Leading the GH team is Finola Hughes (Anna Devane), who admits she was anything but calm before heading into the taping. “I was unbelievably nervous,” reveals Hughes, who served as team captain for costars Maurice Benard (Sonny Corinthos), Rena Sofer (Lois Cerullo), Donnell Turner (Curtis Ashford), and Tanisha Harper (Jordan Ashford). “I was so scared because answering questions in a public format is, like, my biggest fear.”

Fortunately, her children put her through a rigorous testing process before she showed up at the Atlanta set of the game show. “They looked up Family Feud questions from before on the Internet, and they tested me to see if I could even do it,” she explains. “They set it up in the kitchen, and I would do it against my son, and my daughter would read the questions. I had a habit of saying, ‘Buzz’ when I hit the countertop, and they were like, ‘You’re literally gonna go out there and you’re gonna say buzz.’ And I was like, ‘No, I’m not. I promise I won’t.’ So they forced me to do it without saying anything.”

Disney/Wilford Harewood

Hughes was thrilled to discover that her good pal, Michelle Stafford (Phyllis Summers), would be competing on the Y&R team along with Lauralee Bell (Christine Blair), Joshua Morrow (Nick Newman), Bryton James (Devon Winters), and Melissa Claire Egan (Chelsea Lawson). “Oh, then it was game on,” she jokes. “There was a lot of competition between the two shows. But I traveled there with her and Lauralee on the plane and it’s just fun because we’ve been friends for a long time.”

Despite the camaraderie, Hughes’ pre-show jitters were real. “Everybody was sort of hanging out and I was like, ‘I really need to go to my room,’” she relays. “My social battery sometimes gets really overloaded, and I was like, ‘I need to go take some hours to myself.’ So, I went off to my room and kind of got in the zone. Going to bed, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is the night before, this is the night before,’ because I had been thinking of it for so long. I was doing a real number on myself, I’m not gonna lie.”

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She was also concerned about how she would perform under pressure. “I was hoping that I wouldn’t swear,” Hughes confides. “And also, you don’t want your own stupidity to hold up the whole group. You don’t want to be the one who is the idiot. That was what I was afraid of; I didn’t want to let the team down.”

Fortunately, any lingering issues disappeared once she stepped onto the Family Feud stage. “[Host] Steve Harvey makes me laugh, and he made the nerves go away because he was really, really sweet,” Hughes reports. “He came over and was saying how all his family would just love to be there to see the people from the soaps. He shook all of our hands and was just like, ‘This means a lot, seeing all people from the soaps.’ He made us feel very special.  But there was just so much going on and everybody was really friendly and really fun, so that atmosphere makes you relax a little bit more.”

Disney/Wilford Harewood

Still, the rivalry was alive and well, and Team Y&R came prepared. “There was this real friendly competition that on the day,” Hughes shares. “Young and Restless were pretty cohesive in that they had sort of got a color together that they were all going to wear, and we had not done that, so we were sort of vamping on the day, like, ‘What have you got in your closet? Is it similar to this?’ So, they were fully organized when it came to a group color, which we had not done.”

Stafford, in particular, showed off her effortless style. “Whenever you see Michelle, she is always so well dressed,” Hughes says. “Whenever she comes out, you’re always like, ‘Oh, I should have worn that.’ So, Michelle came with a couple of dresses and just looked amazing.”

Once taping began, Hughes was impressed by the gameplay of her cohorts. “Rena was great,” she praises. “Also, people were very funny. Michelle was very funny, and Donnell was funny and Maurice was, too. People were saying risqué things. I kind of kept everything I answered PC, which may have cost me a point at one point because afterwards I was like, ‘Oh, I should have just gone for that.’”

Disney/Wilford Harewood

Despite the intensity and pre-show nerves, Hughes really enjoyed the experience. “It was amazing,” she raves. “It was so much fun. Steve’s got a great team around him, and I really liked being there. I went and introduced myself to the wardrobe master, who was impeccably dressed, because I really like clothes and Steve is always so well dressed, so we had a chat about that, and I really enjoyed it.”

Hughes encourages fans to tune in on Thursday night, promising plenty of laughs and a few surprises. “The best reason is the rivalry between the two shows,” she previews. “It’s going to be really funny — you never know what someone’s going to say. Steve is great. And you’re just seeing all of us in different surroundings and trying not to be stupid, which is no mean feat.”

Celebrity Family Feud, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC