Will Luke and Noah Ever Go All The Way?

I interrupt Passanante at this point because frankly I’m stunned. Turns out she was there at the start of all three of daytime’s seminal gay teen storylines: One Life to Live's Billy Douglas, All My Children's Bianca Montgomery, and of course As the World Turns' Luke Snyder. When I point this out to her, Passanante almost seems uncomfortable with the recognition — as if she doesn’t want people to think gay teens are the only stories she can write (which is obviously not true).

AMC's "Bianca" (Eden Riegel) & OLTL's "Billy Douglas" (Ryan Phillippe)

Based on her past history with Bianca and Billy Douglas, and given the fact that you don't see gay teens on the soap operas she hasn't been involved with, it seems pretty clear Passanante drove the original decision to make Luke Snyder gay, but when I ask her to confirm that she refuses to take credit individually. “That decision was made as a group and with Chris Goutman [the show’s executive producer]," she says. “And the reason we decided to have him be a part of the Snyder family — if you’re gonna do it, I just think it makes much more sense to do it with a character who is front and center, because that way the stakes are so much higher.”

Our conversation moves on to Noah. Unlike Luke, who is intricately woven into the show through family connections, Noah doesn’t have quite the same degree of integration.

Jake Silbermann plays "Noah Mayer"

I ask Passanante if Noah was intended to be a long term character, and whether it took her by surprise that Jake Silbermann as Noah has been so popular.

She laughs, not surprised at all. “Well he’s very cute and very appealing. No, I’m very proud of the way that we’ve brought this character along — you know both Luke and Noah. I’m glad that we’ve taken the time to really… to first investigate Luke’s own feelings about himself, his family’s discoveries about him and each other — you know, that was one year — and then to bring Noah into it in a way that I think surprised a lot of people who at first though he was there for Maddie. And we really took our time with that, and I think we continue to do that. So it doesn’t really surprise me, though I guess I’m pleased that they’ve become such fan favorites. I think that’s wonderful.”

Does Passanante ever think about expanding Noah’s relationship with other characters on the show beyond Luke? “That’s something we always think about," she says. “I can’t really speak to what might happen to these characters down the road. We’ve only written story through December.”

I want to find a way to get Passanante to comment on that seven month period where Luke and Noah didn’t kiss, so I ask her whether she thinks the show made any mistakes along the way in telling the Luke and Noah story and whether "there is anything that you’d do differently?"

She laughs and says there’s never been a story that she’s been involved with that she doesn’t feel that way about. The most she will offer is, “Um, there’s always something. It’s a little hard for me to comment on the last year because you know we’ve had this thing called the writers’ strike, so I wasn’t around for a big chunk of it.”

I ask her specifically about the infamous Christmas mistletoe scene, where the camera panned away from Luke and Noah kissing. Passanante explains again that she wasn’t around for that particular decision because of the writers' strike. But she will say in defense of that scene and about that long seven month dry spell when Luke and Noah didn’t kiss that “people were certainly watching and waiting to see when they’d kiss, and I think that generated interest in the characters and the show.”