ABC
Good Grief: On GH, Eden McCoy’s Josslyn was already mourning the death of her boyfriend when her brother was critically injured.
General Hospital‘s Eden McCoy (Josslyn) is no stranger to playing grief and heartbreak; long before Joss’s lover, Dex Heller, was killed last month, she had to grieve for Oscar Nero, her first serious love interest, who succumbed to a cancerous brain tumor in 2019. But now, not only is McCoy bringing Joss’s devastation over Dex to life, but the character has suffered another epic blow: Her brother, Michael, is clinging to life after being severely burned in a terrible accident.
The Worst of Times
The tragedies, notes McCoy, “are back-to-back for Josslyn. And the news about Michael comes at a very devastating time for her. Obviously, she is already reeling from the first loss — the death of Dex — and now dealing with the potential loss of Michael just adds to the frustration, adds to her anger, adds to her feeling of, like, ‘What the hell is happening?!’ ”
While Joss was grieving for Dex alone, her upset at the possibility that Michael not pull through is one she is sharing with those in her inner circle. “I really enjoy sharing that pain with who I get to work with, my family on the show,” McCoy says. “For Josslyn to be with her family through this is really important, as devastating at it is. The loss of Dex is obviously the biggest loss to Josslyn, but the potential loss of Michael is much more about community; I think there’s a tiny bit of her that’s like, ‘Okay, well, at least I’m not alone. At least I have my mother and our other family members that love Michael and are close to Michael and know him so well.’ ”
Summoning up so much pain day after day as the storyline unfolds was emotionally taxing for McCoy. She admits, “It was a very, very dark few weeks. It was horrendous to film; I did not have a blast filming all of this. Filming all of this stuff back-to-back was really hard, and then, while I was filming it, it was the one-year mark of my mom [Natasha McCoy, who passed away in November 2023 from cancer] dying. So I was already a mess personally, and I was getting called in to work to grieve. I was like, ‘I can’t escape it on either side of my life!’ There were definitely a lot of real moments for me over the course of filming these episodes.”
As much as it “sucked to do,” McCoy also acknowledges, “It was a cathartic experience. And, selfishly, as an actor, I was kind of like, ‘Well, I feel horrible already, so let’s just kind of get all of this out!’ I was like, ‘At least I have something to do with all of these feelings right now.’ ”
The actress says that she had been bracing herself to tap into her own real-life experience with grief from the moment she was first told of GH’s plan to script Dex’s death. “I wasn’t scared about where it would leave Josslyn [storyline-wise]. The scary part was much more personal stuff — it was more like, [being] scared to go to work with the grief of everything that I’m living with as Eden, and having no choice but to access and open up those wounds and those parts of me to do the story justice, because that’s my job.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF EDEN MCCOY
Travel Buddies: McCoy and her mother, Natasha, on a 2023 mother/daughter trip.
McCoy muses that after her mother’s death, “I think for a long time, my job could be used as a distraction or an escape from what was going on in my life and what I’ve lived with, which served its purpose and was great — but this [storyline turn] was kind of just looking me right in the eye, at a lot of stuff that Eden was going through, and that was new, and like I said, that was really scary. I had a lot of anxiety filming certain things that just simply would not have been there had I not gone through the extreme loss and life changes that I have in the past year.” She explains, “A lot of my own personal grief is just now coming out to play because my initial shock has worn off, and I was [marking the anniversary of] her death date…. There were so many weird coincidences and back-to-back moments between my life and Josslyn’s life at the same time that I found extremely anxiety-ridden and overwhelming, but also really beautiful. There’s a good and a bad to everything, you know? But it was a challenge to go to work and do all that and then take it home every day for a while there — and then knowing I have to go and do it again tomorrow.
“But that’s life,” the actress continues. “It’s just a lesson in that that’s how things go. Unexpected things happened to me and unexpected things happened to Josslyn.”
McCoy’s grief journey in the wake of the loss of her mother did give her confidence in her ability to bring truth to her work as Joss navigates life after Dex and faces the prospect of her brother dying, as well. She shares, “When we were doing the Oscar story way back when, I remember saying all the time, ‘Wow, I have so much pressure on me,’ because I hadn’t lost anyone close to me in my life. That was years ago now, and I was like, ‘How am I going to do this justice, because so many people have gone through something like this?’ Filming this story now, I’m at a very different moment in my life and chapter of my life and I’ve gone through the worst loss that could have happened to me. So it was like, ‘Oh, I can do this!’ It was almost a humorous thing, where I was like, ‘God, remember 15-year-old Eden who was like, “I don’t know what I’m doing?” ‘ Now, I’m just like, ‘Yep, got it, roll the cameras!’ So that was interesting. It was kind of a laugh-at-yourself, laugh-at-the-situation life moment kind of thing. All of which is to say that I felt prepared for this moment more than I did in the past.”
McCoy says that a year after her mom’s passing, she feels fundamentally changed both as an actor and as a person. “Absolutely,” she nods. “I mean, period, point-blank, I’m just a different human being. The way I live my life now, what matters to me, my personality, my fears, my lack of fear — all of that has just been turned around on its head.” Being “more present and grounded in the day-to-day” are among the changes she has noticed in herself, which has had an impact on her work. “As an actor, my experiences [to draw from] are just more rich, they’re much more weighted; as a human being, I now now what it’s like to have your life be something one minute, and then have an entirely different life and reality the next. And that’s what happened to Josslyn. That’s what can happen to any of us, and it doesn’t have to be on such a grand scale — you don’t have to lose your boyfriend, or lose your mother at 20 years old, but that’s what happened to me, and it just kind of shot me into seeing things in a completely different way and having access to new emotions. I know what it’s like to be missing someone that isn’t there, or wanting things to be different, and it’s just one of those things where, until it happens to you, you just don’t know what that’s like.”
ABC
Good Grief: On GH, Eden McCoy’s Josslyn was already mourning the death of her boyfriend when her brother was critically injured.
General Hospital‘s Eden McCoy (Josslyn) is no stranger to playing grief and heartbreak; long before Joss’s lover, Dex Heller, was killed last month, she had to grieve for Oscar Nero, her first serious love interest, who succumbed to a cancerous brain tumor in 2019. But now, not only is McCoy bringing Joss’s devastation over Dex to life, but the character has suffered another epic blow: Her brother, Michael, is clinging to life after being severely burned in a terrible accident.
The Worst of Times
The tragedies, notes McCoy, “are back-to-back for Josslyn. And the news about Michael comes at a very devastating time for her. Obviously, she is already reeling from the first loss — the death of Dex — and now dealing with the potential loss of Michael just adds to the frustration, adds to her anger, adds to her feeling of, like, ‘What the hell is happening?!’ ”
While Joss was grieving for Dex alone, her upset at the possibility that Michael not pull through is one she is sharing with those in her inner circle. “I really enjoy sharing that pain with who I get to work with, my family on the show,” McCoy says. “For Josslyn to be with her family through this is really important, as devastating at it is. The loss of Dex is obviously the biggest loss to Josslyn, but the potential loss of Michael is much more about community; I think there’s a tiny bit of her that’s like, ‘Okay, well, at least I’m not alone. At least I have my mother and our other family members that love Michael and are close to Michael and know him so well.’ ”
Summoning up so much pain day after day as the storyline unfolds was emotionally taxing for McCoy. She admits, “It was a very, very dark few weeks. It was horrendous to film; I did not have a blast filming all of this. Filming all of this stuff back-to-back was really hard, and then, while I was filming it, it was the one-year mark of my mom [Natasha McCoy, who passed away in November 2023 from cancer] dying. So I was already a mess personally, and I was getting called in to work to grieve. I was like, ‘I can’t escape it on either side of my life!’ There were definitely a lot of real moments for me over the course of filming these episodes.”
As much as it “sucked to do,” McCoy also acknowledges, “It was a cathartic experience. And, selfishly, as an actor, I was kind of like, ‘Well, I feel horrible already, so let’s just kind of get all of this out!’ I was like, ‘At least I have something to do with all of these feelings right now.’ ”
The actress says that she had been bracing herself to tap into her own real-life experience with grief from the moment she was first told of GH’s plan to script Dex’s death. “I wasn’t scared about where it would leave Josslyn [storyline-wise]. The scary part was much more personal stuff — it was more like, [being] scared to go to work with the grief of everything that I’m living with as Eden, and having no choice but to access and open up those wounds and those parts of me to do the story justice, because that’s my job.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF EDEN MCCOY
Travel Buddies: McCoy and her mother, Natasha, on a 2023 mother/daughter trip.
McCoy muses that after her mother’s death, “I think for a long time, my job could be used as a distraction or an escape from what was going on in my life and what I’ve lived with, which served its purpose and was great — but this [storyline turn] was kind of just looking me right in the eye, at a lot of stuff that Eden was going through, and that was new, and like I said, that was really scary. I had a lot of anxiety filming certain things that just simply would not have been there had I not gone through the extreme loss and life changes that I have in the past year.” She explains, “A lot of my own personal grief is just now coming out to play because my initial shock has worn off, and I was [marking the anniversary of] her death date…. There were so many weird coincidences and back-to-back moments between my life and Josslyn’s life at the same time that I found extremely anxiety-ridden and overwhelming, but also really beautiful. There’s a good and a bad to everything, you know? But it was a challenge to go to work and do all that and then take it home every day for a while there — and then knowing I have to go and do it again tomorrow.
“But that’s life,” the actress continues. “It’s just a lesson in that that’s how things go. Unexpected things happened to me and unexpected things happened to Josslyn.”
McCoy’s grief journey in the wake of the loss of her mother did give her confidence in her ability to bring truth to her work as Joss navigates life after Dex and faces the prospect of her brother dying, as well. She shares, “When we were doing the Oscar story way back when, I remember saying all the time, ‘Wow, I have so much pressure on me,’ because I hadn’t lost anyone close to me in my life. That was years ago now, and I was like, ‘How am I going to do this justice, because so many people have gone through something like this?’ Filming this story now, I’m at a very different moment in my life and chapter of my life and I’ve gone through the worst loss that could have happened to me. So it was like, ‘Oh, I can do this!’ It was almost a humorous thing, where I was like, ‘God, remember 15-year-old Eden who was like, “I don’t know what I’m doing?” ‘ Now, I’m just like, ‘Yep, got it, roll the cameras!’ So that was interesting. It was kind of a laugh-at-yourself, laugh-at-the-situation life moment kind of thing. All of which is to say that I felt prepared for this moment more than I did in the past.”
McCoy says that a year after her mom’s passing, she feels fundamentally changed both as an actor and as a person. “Absolutely,” she nods. “I mean, period, point-blank, I’m just a different human being. The way I live my life now, what matters to me, my personality, my fears, my lack of fear — all of that has just been turned around on its head.” Being “more present and grounded in the day-to-day” are among the changes she has noticed in herself, which has had an impact on her work. “As an actor, my experiences [to draw from] are just more rich, they’re much more weighted; as a human being, I now now what it’s like to have your life be something one minute, and then have an entirely different life and reality the next. And that’s what happened to Josslyn. That’s what can happen to any of us, and it doesn’t have to be on such a grand scale — you don’t have to lose your boyfriend, or lose your mother at 20 years old, but that’s what happened to me, and it just kind of shot me into seeing things in a completely different way and having access to new emotions. I know what it’s like to be missing someone that isn’t there, or wanting things to be different, and it’s just one of those things where, until it happens to you, you just don’t know what that’s like.”