Daytime TV Performer of the Week: ‘General Hospital’s Katelyn MacMullen Is a Force as Willow Dumps Drew at the Altar

The Doctor Is In

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Have you ever dug yourself so far down into a deep, dark hole that you didn’t even realize what you’d done until it was almost too late to dig yourself out?

That’s what happened to poor Willow Tait on General Hospital, played by Katelyn MacMullen, who brings both vulnerability and strength, and awareness and delusion to her character.  The young woman had turned in one cult (Dawn of Day) for another (blind devotion to morally-challenged Drew Cain, played by fan favorite Cameron Mathison).

Fortunately, Willow finally saw the light thanks to Curtis (Donnell Turner) and dumped Drew just as they were about to get married.

For her portrayal of a woman riding a roller coaster of co-dependent dysfunction, TV Insider is bestowing Daytime Performer of the Week honors on MacMullen.

Disney/Christine Bartolucci

We saw just how far Willow had gone in terms of her blind devotion to Drew when she shrugged off Dr. Portia Robinson’s (Brook Kerr) revelation that Drew was going to frame Michael (Rory Gibson) as an unfit father.

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But learning that Drew had slept with Willow’s mother, Nina (Cynthia Watros), took the wedding cake. On what should have been the happiest moment of her life, Willow asked Drew right at the altar if he’d been intimate with Nina. Hearing Drew’s confession was all Willow needed to end things with him during the ceremony in front of invited family members and friends.

MacMullen has been bringing a heightened, fragile quality to her character ever since she lost custody of her kids, Wiley (Viron Weaver) and Daisy, to their father, Michael. The actress has played Willow as both a frayed nerve and a myopic mother, believing that committing herself to Drew was the only way to get her children back into her life.

It would have been easy for Willow to have continued with the ceremony, but once we saw her pull her hands away from Drew, we knew she was ready to call her groom out on his cheating ways.

“I was such an idiot,” Willow proclaimed to Drew in front of Lucy (Lynn Herring), the wedding officiator, and invited family and guests. “Every time I listened to you, I gave Michael ammunition against me.”

The script called for Willow to act as if a light switch had been flicked, and MacMullen dove into the terrific material that allowed her character to choose independence over Drew’s machinations.

“Your lie hurt my son. You make it possible for Michael to take my children away from me,” Willow asserted. “I trusted you, and now I have nothing.”

While this moment showed Willow digging into her strength, MacMullen’s performance made one thing clear – Willow is still quite fragile. She bolted over to Carly’s (Laura Wright) to see her kids, still in her wedding dress and mascara ruined from crying. Willow hoped that by dumping Drew, she could pick right up where she left off before she fell under his spell, but that wasn’t going to happen.

Willow may have thought the world would see that she was different, but MacMullen played her character as a woman still in hysterics. The more Willow realized she couldn’t see her kids, the more it became apparent that the manic mother still has far to go.

Disney/Christine Bartolucci

MacMullen got to bring a calmness to her character after she sought refuge with Elizabeth (Rebecca Herbst) at her home. Liz offered her fellow nurse a haven, fresh clothes, and a place to vent her feelings. “I can’t believe how much of my life I let him control,” Willow confessed to Liz. Willow likened Drew’s manipulation of her to when she was controlled by Shiloh (Coby Ryan McLaughlin) and Harmony (Igna Cadranel). “I swore I would never let something like that happen again, but here I am,” Willow marveled.

Willow’s attorney, Ric Lansing (Rick Hearst), advised his client to hold off on trying to see her children. While she’s made progress, Willow’s far from being perfect. She couldn’t help herself from charging over to the Quartermaine mansion and making a plea with Michael about seeing her kids once again.

Willow, seeing Drew’s controlling side, is at the beginning and not the end of her journey to becoming the stable mother she needs to be in order to see her children. MacMullen plays Willow as a daughter filled with anger towards her mother, but Nina’s not the bad guy in all this.

On one hand, Willow has the awareness to realize she’s once again in a position she’d never promised herself she’d be in again. On the other hand, what’s to say it won’t happen a third time?

MacMullen plays Willow with her heart on her sleeve and her head on straight (well, straighter than it’s been in a while!). But she has a way to go, and it’ll be rewarding watching Willow mature from this setback, in time.

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