Michelle Stafford talks General Hospital, Y&R, her beauty line, Skin Nation

Two time Emmy Award-winning actress Michelle Stafford recently took the time to speak with us about General Hospital, The Young and the Restless, The Stafford Project, and her beauty line, Skin Nation.

Two-time Emmy Award-winning actress Michelle Stafford recently spoke with us about General Hospital, The Young and The Restless, The Stafford Project, and her company, Skin Nation, which provides safe and healthy alternatives to the chemical-laden beauty products floating around on the market today.

Here’s what she had to say!

Hidden Remote: Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it!

Michelle Stafford: Thank you for wanting to talk to me!

HR: You are an extremely gifted actress, and you really add something special to every scene you’re in. You have a serious presence whenever you enter the scene. It’s like, boom! (laughs)

Stafford: Really? That’s so awesome! Thank you!

HR: So what’s the latest as far as your interactions with your estranged ex-boyfriend, Valentin, in General Hospital?

Photo credit: Courtesy Michelle Stafford /

Stafford: She really doesn’t like the situation, and doesn’t want him. Because she understands him, you know? She knows that he’s going to just end up hurting her in some way if they get back together. We’ve all had those, right?

HR: Right, right. So you’re getting to know your daughter as well, I understand. Can you tell me a little bit about where your character is at and what you see that fans don’t see?

Stafford: I actually think it’s the other way around. I think fans see more than I see, you know? Because people watching, they’re filling it in with their own life. That’s the fun of it — that if they relate to the character, they’re like, “I’ve done that. Oh, I do that. Oh, look what she’s doing. She’s having a hard time like I’m having.” So they actually see more of it because they fill it in.

HR: That’s cool, that’s cool. So what’s a typical day like on the set of General Hospital?

Stafford: You either get there in the morning or you get there in the afternoon. We have different types of days. You either have the morning call or the afternoon call. I am a big fan of the afternoon call. (laughs) And you just go in, you get ready, they tell you where you have to stand for the scene, and then you get ready and you run it with your partner — all your partners in the scene — and then go up and rehearse it for the camera, and then shoot it. It’s really fun.

HR: You exude a lot of confidence whenever you play a role. And I wanted to ask as a point of personal curiosity, how do you just go into that mode? You’re able to just get into character and go for it with such conviction — how do you do that?

Stafford: I’ve been doing this for a really long time. And I’m really a pretty confident person, anyway, meaning I just don’t have a lot of baggage like, “I suck, I suck” — because that’s a waste of time. And I’m so confident that I like to build others around me up. I want them to feel comfortable too.

HR: You’ve won two Emmys and you’ve had a lot of success. Looking at your career, what would you say has been the biggest thing that’s contributed to your success?

Stafford: I think just [going for it] to be honest with you. Just doing it and knowing what has to be done and getting it done. And also, my upbringing and my friends and just my basic belief in life.

HR: That’s cool. So your role in The Young and the Restless was so iconic.

Photo credit: Courtesy Michelle Stafford /

Stafford: It was just really fun. It was a role that was really great for me. At the time, the role was very different than what it ended up being later when I was playing it. And it was just so much fun, and she was so deceiving and underhanded and sneaky and manipulative and brilliant. It was just really, really fun to play a role like that. It was a really well-written role.

HR: I wanted to ask you about The Stafford Project where you got to show off more of your comedy side. I thought your comedic timing was incredible and your jokes were great.

Stafford: Oh, thank you!

HR: So you wrote it, right?

Stafford: Yes, I wrote it along with Paige Long and Paige Dorian, my writing partners, yeah. The three of us together kind of created the whole thing. It was my idea to start because it was based on my life, and then the three of us created this cool thing.

HR: That’s awesome. In watching it, knowing it was based on your life, I was like, whoa, did she really experience all of that? That’s kind of bizarre, you know?

Stafford: So yeah, I mean we took something that really happened, and it was so insane — that we made it funny. And insane is kind of funny. I just mainly wanted to take experiences in my life that had been quite horrific, actually, and make light of them and make them funny. Like, I’d go out on a date and it would end horribly and it would be super weird, and then I would tell the Paige’s, “We gotta write about this. This was awesome.”

HR: That was so funny when that guy picked you up for a date in episode 2 with a guitar slung around his back, and then he gets in the car and he’s like, “Yeah, there’s no air conditioning.”

Stafford: Yeah, I mean that was a real date that I went on. I went on a date with this dude and then he got up in the middle of the restaurant and started playing his guitar and doing his set. And I was like, “Oh, wow. Okay. We’re doing this.”

HR: You’re kidding!

Stafford: No! I mean it really happened! And so we just made it funny.

HR: Oh my goodness, that is hilarious! (laughs)

Stafford: Yeah! I mean it was like, “All right.” So funny. Oh, Dave, in fact, is just leaving, and he was the guy in episode 5. He was the guy who was working on the house in episode 5 and he’s here right now.

HR: Oh, nice! That’s awesome.

Stafford: Hey, Dave, did we call you Dave in the episode?

Dave: I think so.

Stafford: Yeah, you were Dave. Okay. He was Dave.

Dave: That’s my real job.

Stafford: (laughs) All right, cool.

HR: So what inspired you to take on your beauty product line, Skin Nation?

Stafford: Well, what inspired me is that my sister got sick. And I started researching carcinogens that are in our food and that are in our skincare. And I had no idea, my sister had no idea — none of us had any idea [about the risky ingredients many products have]. And I was like, this isn’t cool. So I created Skin Nation from that. I just wanted to create something that was botanical and actually effective that was also good for you and good for your body.

HR: What kind of products do you offer at Skin Nation?

Stafford: We have sixteen products. We have a men’s line where we have an aftershave and a face wash, and then we have lots of products for the face: serums, masks — go on the site and check it out; it’s pretty great.

HR: So for a guy like me who’s never used beauty products like this, what would you recommend I try?

Interview: Michelle Stafford talks General Hospital, Skin Nation beauty line

By Ryan Mekkes | Nov 11, 2018

Two time Emmy Award-winning actress Michelle Stafford recently took the time to speak with us about General Hospital, The Young and the Restless, The Stafford Project, and her beauty line, Skin Nation.