Bold and the Beautiful's Rebecca Budig on Susan Lucci, her soap opera exit, and mom guilt

Soap veteran, Rebecca Budig is exclusively sharing her guidebook to navigating her successful soap opera career, motherhood, and life in the caregiving stage.

While discussing her new CBS podcast “Soapy” with Greg Rikaart, the daytime TV star dished on her career highs and lows. Budig, known for her roles on “Guiding Light” (1995), “All My Children” (1999), “General Hospital” (2015) and presently “The Bold and the Beautiful,” shared which soap opera show exit had the biggest impact on her personally.

“On a personal level, I would say that experience in General Hospital probably impacted me the most,” Budig, 52, said.

The actress, who portrayed Hayden Barnes, was initially written off the series in 2017 for “storyline necessity.” She returned in July 2019 and made her final appearance on “General Hospital” in November 2019. Budig says the sudden exit “took me by surprise” because she was “pregnant” with her first child.

“They didn't kill me [off the show], and I was super grateful for that.” – Rebecca Budig

She continued, “I would instantly go to [All My Children’s] Greenlee, but I think General Hospital playing Hayden. I was going through so much in my own lifebecause I was like postpartum depression and anxiety, and then I worked with Michael [Easton], who encouraged me to write about it. And then I wrote it, and I shot a short film.”

In 2020, the actress released her award-winning short film “About a Girl,” about a mother suffering from severe postpartum depression, mirroring her own life experience. Budig and her husband, Michael Benson, welcomed their daughter Charlotte Jo in September 2014.

“I felt an insecurity in a way that I hadn't felt before” – Rebecca Budig

After returning from maternity leave, Budig admits “it felt bizarre” being back on set as a working mom, which resulted in her only taking projects that wouldn’t require her to travel far from home.

“I had just quit nursing and just feeling uncomfortable in my body because of the postpartum,” she recalled. “I didn't realize I was in such the throes of postpartum depression and anxiety, which lasted, by the way, till she was like almost 4, like 3 and a half.”

Another stage of life Budig admits was “really hard”: becoming a caregiver alongside her mom as her late dad’s health declined. She shared her advice for people in the thick of it, especially those in the sandwich generation between raising children and caring for their elderly parents.

“I felt like it was important to show my kid, to show up and be there for my dad. Although it's grueling, it can be really hard, you have to take breaks and take walks, you know. Do things for yourself for a second, but it's all worth it in the end, right? Because you don't get that time back,” the actress said.

The “All My Children” cast, where she played the beloved Greenlee Smythe, is where she found her on-screen family away from her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. In fact, Budig says she was inspired to pursue acting because of Susan Lucci, who later became her co-star.

“I like grew up watching soaps,” she said. “I always was like, I want to be Susan Lucci. I used to say that when I was little.”

Over the years, Budig says she keeps in touch via text with Susan and her other castmates like, Josh Duhamel, Chriselle Stause, Alicia Minshew, and Cameron Mathison along with Michael O’Leary from “Guiding Light.” She recalled the emotional last day on set when she found out Greenlee would be killed off the soap opera series in February 2009.

“It was just weird. It didn't feel like it was like an ending,” she recalled on her last day since the show, originally shot in New York, moved to Los Angeles for production.

“It was still hard to say goodbye to the character I loved, and was there for so many years, and the people that I loved. It was hard,” Budig continued.

She interviewed “best friend” Mathison, for her latest project, "Soapy Hosted by Rebecca Budig and Greg Rikaart," along with a star-studded lineup of daytime television stars, including Eric Braeden (“The Young And The Restless”), Deidre Hall (“Days of our Lives”), Lauralee Bell (“The Young And The Restless”), and more.

The podcast premieres on July 8 with new episodes weekly through Sept. 30.