'General Hospital' Stars Rebecca Herbst & Rebecca Budig Dish Real-Life Friendship

Rebecca Herbst and Rebecca Budig

On-screen, Rebecca Budig and Rebecca Herbst play bitterest enemies on ABC soap opera General Hospital. They exchange icy glares, resounding slaps, and cutting insults. However, off-screen these two have been close friends for over ten years.

During ABC’s 2004 Super Soap Weekend, Budig danced the night away with Herbst’s son, Ethan, for hours. That set the stage for solid two-member girl squad, the pair told Soap Opera Digest in its latest issue.

“She’s just a perfect partner,” Herbst said of Budig. There’s no doubt she meant this as a thespian and as a gal pal.

Both actresses expressed great satisfaction that they have consistently worked together since Budig's arrival in Port Charles as Hayden.

“I would have been annoyed if she were working with other people,” Herbst said with a laugh.

Both actresses agreed that their off-screen bond lends their on-screen relationship layers of subtlety and nuance. Elizabeth and Hayden’s rivalry is set to get a whole lot more complicated once they find out their sisters. That’s to say nothing of what will happen when the two find out that Nikolas, once again, cheated death.

Herbst and Budig said they both still get nervous before intense scenes, which most of theirs together are. Both actresses were surprised to learn this of each other when they began working together at GH.

When asked what they like most about working with each other, Herbst and Budig had essentially the same answer. Each actress offered that a scene with the other promises to be enjoyable and go smoothly.

Budig summed up their tight-knit relationship best.

“Oh, my god. If my husband leaves me, will you marry me?”

Herbst assured her good friend that she would!

Herbst joined GH in 1997, while Budig made her Port Charles debut in 2015.

Akbi Khan has been a soap mega-fan for 31 years. She has been writing about them and working to save the soap genre for several years. Last May she got her Master’s in rhetoric and composition, for which she completed a thesis on the Save Our Soaps (SOS) movement and created her own SOS group, thistimeitsforever.org. In her spare time she enjoys spending time with family and friends, activism for various progressive causes, traveling down her spiritual path, rollerskating, going dancing, anything having to do with language or words, and laughing heartily and often, and more. You may reach her at akbikhan@gmail.com.