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Susan Lucci is sharing her respect for the woman who created Pine Valley.
The All My Children alum took to Instagram to reflect on the 56th anniversary of the soap opera’s debut. In her Instagram tribute, Lucci remembers the show’s premiere as the point where “everything changes.”
“Thank you to Agnes Nixon for creating Pine Valley and for Erica Kane. To all the cast and crew, I love you, always. And to the fans – Thank you for watching—and for your passion!!! Thank you for keeping us on the air for forty-one years!!! ❤️🎉🎊,” she captioned a few select shots of Erica Kane throughout the years.
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Lucci starred as Erica Kane on the daytime soap opera from 1970 until its final episode in 2013. All My Children aired for 41 years on ABC from January 5, 1970, to September 23, 2011. It was later revived briefly as a web series in 2013. (The show began in a half-hour format before changing to hour-long episodes in 1977.)
The show was centered around Kane, which “was unheard of at the time,” being that she was a teenager rather than an adult, AMC’s former executive producer Julie Hanan Carruthers explained per PEOPLE’s 2011 All My Children special edition.
“She was the first of her kind. I needed to write a character who would say and do the things I wished I could. Women relate to her because she is speaking for them. And men love her because she’s feisty and beautiful,” AMC creator Nixon, who died in 2016 at age 93, said at the time.
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While chatting with PEOPLE about the soap’s legacy in 2022, she shared some insights into what made Erica Kane the soap opera icon she is.
“With Erica, you never knew what she was going to say or do, and that made her really fun to watch,” Lucci added. “She was full of spirit, and people identified with that spirit of her very much.”
“So certainly, I think, the same thing that women and men could identify with would still be there,” she continued, musing on where her character would be now. “She was a woman you loved to hate, but, on the other hand, you also loved to love her and root for her.”
