General Hospital Comings and Goings: Rena Sofer Exits As Lois, ‘Door is Always Open’ For Return

On the October 24 episode of General Hospital, Lois Cerullo shared a poignant good-bye with daughter Brook Lynn, from whom she’s been estranged since Brook Lynn discovered that Lois had lied to her about the fate of the baby boy Brook Lynn birthed when she was a teenager, and headed out of town — and Soap Opera Digest can confirm that Daytime Emmy-winner Rena Sofer has officially wrapped her return trip to the show, which kicked off in 2023… at least for now!

The Good-bye Girl

Sofer’s affiliation with GH stretches back to 1993, when the actress — who at the time had two soap roles under her belt, Another World‘s Joyce and Loving‘s Rocky — was first cast as the outspoken, lovable and long-nail-favoring Lois, who quickly became romantically linked to “Eddie Maine,” the rocker alter ego of buttoned-up Ned Ashton. The pair became a fan favorite and tied the knot on-screen in 1995. That same year, Sofer won both the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress and the Soap Opera Digest Award for Outstanding Younger Lead Actress.

In 1996, as she was poised to welcome her first daughter, Rosabel, with then-husband Wally Kurth (Ned), Sofer exited the show, going on to a prolific career in prime-time (Seinfeld, Friends, Just Shoot Me and 24 are just a few of the notable series she appeared in). Then, from 2013-22, she returned to the daytime arena to star on Bold and Beautiful as scheming jewelry designer Quinn Fuller.

It was two years ago this month that Sofer’s Lois popped back up in Port Charles some 27 years after she was last a cast member (though she did return for a handful of episodes in 1997 to wrap up Lois and Ned’s storyline). In her first interview about her comeback, she enthused to Digest, “I’ve played a lot of characters in my career and Lois is probably one of the top three characters I’ve ever played in 37 years of being an actress. So to be able to go back and do it was unreal.” She also voiced her gratitude to the fans who never stopped hoping Lois might one day return, saying that their support “means everything to me. I mean, if they hadn’t spent the last 27 years constantly making little buzzing noises about Lois coming back or me coming back as Lois, I wouldn’t be in this position. It’s inspiring and I am forever grateful. This whole experience can really be summed up in that word.”

Though Sofer’s return was initially intended to be a limited run, things worked out so well between the actress and the powers-that-be at GH that Lois’s storyline was expanded beyond the show’s original plans. Lois wound up becoming a central player in the dramatic storyline that saw Brook Lynn learn that Gio was the son she’d given up all those years ago, and that her mother had deceived her about the boy’s whereabouts.

Even before Sofer came back to GH, she and her husband, Director Sanford Bookstaver, had been planning to move out of Los Angeles and establish a home base in upstate New York. This past August, they made that dream a reality, and Sofer posted a video to Instagram announcing the news, which she captioned, “Goodbye, LA!”

Since that time, she has traveled back to Los Angeles to make a few additional appearance as Lois, but in today’s episode, the character revealed to Brook Lynn that she was leaving the country that very day and jetting to Seoul, South Korea to become a tour manager for Blaze, and that the length of the tour was “TBD,” since the singer was adding new dates all the time. But, she assured Brook Lynn through tears, “The second you need me, I will drop everything and come running.”

This built-in opportunity for Lois to return to Port Charles yet again was very much by design; a GH source tells Digest that “the door is always open” for Sofer to slide back into the role sometime in the future.