Genie Francis began her TV career when she was a teenager. Thirty million viewers watched her wedding to Luke on “General Hospital” (left). (ABC)
Deidre Hall’s a memory. Susan Lucci and Erika Slezak are on their way out. For soap opera lovers, the divas are dropping like flies, just like the soaps they used work on, “Days of Our Lives,” All My Children” and “One Life to Live,” respectively.
With the recent cancellations of “AMC” and “OLTL,” the number of soaps will shrink from a high of 19 shows in 1969 to four by next January.
No one gets that sea change more than soap legend Genie Francis, who played Laura Spencer on ABC’s “General Hospital” from 1976-2008.
“The audience has gone away. It began with the O.J. Simpson trial [in the mid-1990s] when everybody tuned into the reality of that trial,” says Francis. “That was sort of the beginning of the tune-out — but the tune-out continued.”
If the audience and the networks have weaned themselves off daytime drama, Francis remains devoted to the genre.
On Friday, the day after her 49th birthday, she debuts on CBS’ top-ranked “The Young and the Restless” as Genevieve Atkinson, the antagonistic mother of Ethan “Cane” Ashby, who was murdered on the show earlier this year. Francis says her character is “driven by a need for revenge and has developed sociopathic tendencies, shall we say.”
“It is really fun for me. God knows I’ve done plenty of soap — but I’ve never gotten to do anything like that ever,” she told The Post in a recent phone interview from her home in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband of 23 years, actor Jonathan Frakes (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”), and their two children, Jameson, 16, and Elizabeth, who turns 14 on May 30.
A mere 14 when her soap career began, Francis rocketed to fame under the tutelage of Gloria Monty, an imperious, legendary force of nature in the daytime world.
“Let me put it this way: I’m nonthreatening to her because I’m a kid — 15, 16 — just quietly by her side, and she’d tell me what she was doing and why she was doing it,” she says. “I got quite the education by virtue of being quasi-raised by her.”
Monty, who died in 2006, hooked younger viewers with twisted plots, including one where a diabolical tycoon tried to freeze the world, that offset mainstream stories of love and heartache. “I think she was the J.J. Abrams of her time,” Francis says. “She happened to be in daytime, but she really knew what she wanted and she did it.”
Monty’s mentoring of Francis culminated in “General Hospital’s” very own royal wedding. Nov. 17 will mark the 30th anniversary of the spectacular nuptials of Luke (Anthony Geary) and Laura, which drew the kind of ratings that would make any contemporary television producer weep — 30 million viewers.
With numbers like that, the copycats swarmed. “Every show looked for their Luke and Laura,” Francis says. “In our business there are people who have a vision and people who are knock-off artists.”
Since then, Francis says soaps have resisted reinvention, helping lead to their demise. And as shows and fans vanish, Francis savors her “Restless” role.
“I did ingénue much longer than anybody has a right to with Laura,” says Francis. “This role is hard, a challenge, and I’m learning more about myself as an actress.”
About recent whispers that “General Hospital” may also get canceled, Francis says, “It does make you worry because there were rumors about ‘All My Children’ and then, like, six weeks later it was real,” she says. “So it makes you wonder.”
But she has an ultimate prediction about “Y&R”: “I think it’s probably going to be the last man standing,” she says.
“It’s the end of an era, but I am very proud to have been a part of it,” she says, with a mixture of sadness and pride. “Everything comes to an end — that’s just the way it is, you know?”