“That's the height of storytelling when you can talk about an issue that maybe some people are dealing with, like abuse, and then have the audience experience such great empathy because they care about these characters who have been a part of their lives for so long. They should get more credit.”

One Life to Live creator Agnes Nixon recently passed away. You’ve characterized her on Twitter as a pioneer. Can you tell us about why you view her in this way and her influence today?

"Whenever I watched the credits, I thought 'Who's this woman who created these two very interesting and very different worlds of All My Children and One Life to Live?' Especially One Life to Live, which had such a diverse group of characters — it was important to see people who looked like they were from the neighborhood where I came from.

"Agnes Nixon was not afraid to go headlong into issues, such as AIDS, through the AIDS Memorial Quilt and coming out stories. The decision to make Erica Kane's daughter, Bianca, a lesbian had a huge impact. She decided to do that because Erica Kane was someone who everyone loved, who had been a part of their lives for so long. Another of One Life to Live’s most impactful storylines was the Todd Manning, Marty Saybrooke college gang rape storyline and sexual assault [in 1993].

"My mother told me about an interracial storyline when Agnes first started, and she did an abortion storyline in the 1970s that my grandmother told me about. She decided to write a character dealing with cervical cancer at a time when you couldn't say certain words on television. She couldn't use the word 'cancer,' and she couldn't say 'hysterectomy.' That's what the character went through and the audience was allowed to take that journey with her. Agnes leaned into some really challenging stories and made us feel for those characters. That is her lasting impact as a writer."

And to think many people just write off the genre as all evil twins.

"There's always amnesia and crazy storylines where people go to the Old West or into some fantasy world called Eterna. There's just weird stuff, but then there's great social drama as well."

How does soap opera storytelling manifest itself in more seriously regarded drama?

“Soap operas are put into a separate category than regular drama and that should not be the case. They are dramas, yes, and sometimes they are heightened, but they are dramas.

“Once you take it from daytime to prime time, then suddenly it becomes legitimized. We see that going back to the nighttime soaps that my mom used to love, like Dynasty and Dallas. There’s a resurgence of that now with shows like Empire, and Scandal, where you marry some very soapy elements and you put it in the White House. Game of Thrones has some very soapy elements — it just happens to be presented with dragons and swords, which is not a bad thing, but it's all just good, juicy drama.”