The second season of SOAPnet's General Hospital: Night Shift accomplished the
unimaginable. For 13 weeks, GH's cable spin off told powerful,
multi-generational tales of love, hope and mortality, all primarily set in the
soap's historic hospital. The series was truly a Valentine to long term fans of
GH and beautifully explained to newer fans why iconic veterans like Tristan
Rogers (Robert), Finola Hughes (Anna) and Antonio Sabato Jr. (Jagger) are so
beloved. While making GH: Night Shift a success was a collaborative effort, it
was one novice soap opera writing's vision of telling stories featuring the
characters he grew up loving, as well as introducing an Indian doctor and
telling a gay love story, that set Night Shift apart. That writer was Sri
Rao.
On today's episode of the Daytime Confidential podcast Luke and
Jamey have a conversation with Rao, A Wharton Business School graduate who gave
up his high-powered career in Manhattan, to follow his true passion for being a
writer and director. Rao offers a refreshingly unjaded perspective about
everything from the use of veterans in daytime to the politics behind gay
storytelling.
Rao shares the process he and his writing team embarked
upon in giving larger-than-life superhero Robert Scorpio an all-too-real
Achilles Heel in the form of cancer. He reveals how supportive ABC
Daytime/SOAPnet head honcho Brian Frons was in allowing him the freedom to tell
his stories and talks about the other projects his Sri Rao and Company are
working on, including a teen drama series inspired by his boyhood love for My So
Called Life called What Goes On and the Bollywood thriller New York. Rao also answers the question fans of
Night Shift are dying to know: Would he ever consider bringing his passion and
prowess over to daytime?
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