General Hospital Face-Off: ‘Will the Real Carly Please Stand Up?’

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Sometimes it’s fun to look back and wonder: What if? That’s what we’ve been doing as Sarah Joy Brown has been taking a trip down Memory Lane over on X with the fans. She’s been talking about her experience on television, from General Hospital to VR Troopers. And she’s gotten into her time in Port Charles as both Carly and Claudia!

With that said, it has been a little time since she originated the role of Carly, so it’s understandable if the order of actresses who’ve played the role got a little muddled. Laura Wright, not everyone may realize, is actually the fourth actor to play the strong (and sometimes headstrong!) woman.

But when Brown got the number off a bit on X, one fan jumped in suggesting she forgot about Tamara Braun (most recently Days of Our Lives‘ Ava) picking up the role right after her as the second Carly. Brown’s response? Of course she didn’t forget! “She looked so much like me my own father mistook the two of us.” Wow. We guess that’s some good casting!

Brown went on to laugh that she heard from a lot of people “who didn’t know she wasn’t me at first!”

And that’s when fan Clay Stevenson came up with an utterly crazy, wonderful idea that General Hospital could have done with Braun and Brown. “In another place and time,” he tweeted, “you two could have a done a Single White Female story with one of you playing the real Carly Roberts and the other being Caroline Benson.”

Brown was all for that idea! “‘Will the real Carly Benson etc. etc. please stand up,’ and put both hands up!”

Carly, longtime fans know, was Bobbie’s daughter adopted by the Bensons. Her real name was Caroline Benson, though she went by Carly Roberts. She was incognito when she first arrived, intent on getting revenge on Bobbie, so she adopted the name of her best friend who died in a car crash, Carly Roberts.

Except Carly didn’t die, it turned out, she just went into a coma and ended up changing her name to Reese Marshall and… it was all convoluted. But the point is Braun and Brown would have been the perfect actresses to play the two characters. Maybe Brown could have come to town as Caroline Benson pretending to be Carly Roberts, only for Braun to replace her as Carly Roberts arrived in Port Charles, kidnapped Caroline and pretended to be her!

Eventually, the truth would come out, folks would struggle to figure out who’s the real Carly and Caroline and, in the end we could have had both of them stick around Port Charles. We’d have to figure out how to get to Wright’s version of the characters, of course, but we’re sure the show could have figured something out!

It’s all in good fun and, admittedly, we may just be feeling a bit greedy wanting all three ladies in Port Charles, but we can’t help it!