General Hospital fans were prepared for an emotional goodbye to Jacklyn Zeman and Bobbie Spencer this January, but we might not have been ready for everything the show had in store. Our hearts skipped a beat when we realized who was playing a mysterious reporter and then they skipped more beats the next day when we realized who that reporter was.
GH Comes Full Circle With BJ Jones
In what was perhaps one of the most gut-wrenching stories and series of episodes in soap opera history, 8-year-old BJ Jones was in a school van accident that left her brain dead. Her neurosurgeon father Tony Jones knew the moment he saw her when she was brought into the ER.
Tony and Bobbie then made the impossible decision to turn off BJ’s life support and donate her heart to her cousin Maxie, who was dying and awaiting a transplant in the same hospital. It was 30 years ago and old fans remember these scenes like they were yesterday and new fans can see them for the first time thanks to YouTube.
Eagle-eyed viewers noticed on January 10 that the actress playing AP reporter Angela Brighton was Brighton Herford, the actress who played BJ from the time she was an infant until she was eight. By January 11, we knew that Angela Brighton was really Angel BJ, back to visit her loved ones and learn more about the late mother who never got to raise her.
Brighton Hertford Was Ready To Be BJ Again
While Brighton Hertford continued to act after BJ’s 1994 death and earned a BFA in theater at Brigham Young University, she settled into a tech career in Utah and had been focusing on that when GH casting director Mark Tecshner found her.
“Getting that outreach from Mr. Mark Teschner was pretty out of left field and very exciting,” she told Soap Opera Digest. “The initial outreach was [him saying], ‘Hey, just making sure I’ve got the right Brighton here. Is this the Brighton that played B.J. Jones? Because this is Mark Teschner. I don’t know if you remember me.’’ And I was like, ‘Mark, of course I remember you. How could I forget you? And to what do I owe this pleasure?’
“He said, ‘We’re not 100 percent sure yet, but we’re batting around some ideas about the tribute that we want to pay to Jackie. Your name has been thrown in the ring and we wanted to see if you’re available. Are you even in the area? I looked you up and it seems like you’re in Utah, and I don’t know if you would be free.'”
Hertford was amazed when she realized she was supposed to already be in LA around the time of taping and called the entire turn of events “serendipitous” as if it was all meant to be.
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