Susan Lucci and Agnes Nixon discuss groundbreaking lesbian storyline on “All My Children”

At an All My Children panel Tuesday at the Television Critics Association gathering, All My Children creator Agnes Nixon and the show’s legendary star Susan Lucci (Erica Kane), both said one of their favorite storylines in four decades of doing the soap is Erica’s daughter Bianca being a lesbian.

“I am so proud to have been part of the storyline where Bianca came out to her mother Erica,” Lucci said. “When that was presented to me, I was told that there are a lot of gay kids in this country who commit suicide rather than tell their parents who they really are because they feel their parents won’t love them anymore.”

“In this medium, in these hands, we could tell the story in real time from everybody’s point of view with respect for the human beings out there who are actually going through this. I felt very proud to be a part of that. … I remember the conversations with the producer at the time and I was in tears thinking that we could have a storyline that could empower one teenager out there.”

Nixon revealed the behind-the-scenes complications when she first decided to add a gay character to the show: “We very much wanted to do a gay story of someone coming out but we knew because of prejudiced people, that we had to have it be part of a story of someone that the audience was so invested in that they’d keep watching even though they didn’t like what we were doing. So finally we were able to let it be Erica’s daughter. … At first there was such prejudice against the story from some people.”

Helping matters, according to Lucci, was the fact that Bianca was played by Eden Riegel who she describes “as such a brilliant young actress. … She really got in and then some and brought so much to the role.”

Bianca came out to her mother in 2000 and three years later shared the first lesbian kiss on an American daytime soap with the character of Lena Kundera. The actress won an Emmy in 2005 and left the show later that year. But she has returned several times for brief or extended stays including daytime’s first same-sex wedding last year when Bianca married Reese Williams (Tamara Braun).