Exclusive: Susan Lucci pulls back the curtain on motherhood and grief

Susan Lucci has lived many lives, but through it all, her priority has always been her family.

The actress, 79, the reigning "Daytime's Leading Lady" thanks to her decades-long portrayal of Erica Kane in All My Children, has a new memoir out in the world, her second, titled La Lucci.

Speaking exclusively with HELLO! at The 92NY on the book's release day, the star opened up about the main circumstances that inspired her to get writing — the death of her longtime husband, Helmut Huber.

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Susan and the Austrian-born chef married in 1969, welcoming two children together, Liza, now 50, and Andreas, now 45. They remained together until March 2022, when Helmut passed away aged 84, after 52 years of marriage.

"When I lost my husband, I felt lost. Completely. I felt like half a person" she shared with us. "I felt like I didn't even know what I'd do."

Just two short months later, though, she'd had a performance scheduled that she decided to go ahead with. "I kept that, [because] it was comedy, I knew I would be laughing, that would be good for me," Susan noted. "And that was one of the first steps I took."

"I was trying to find me again in all of this. And being on that stage and doing that, working with people I had worked with and who I loved, that helped me put one foot in front of the other, helped me stand up."

The next step? Doing renovations in their home. "My husband used to say, if anything happened to me, he couldn't stay there because I would be everywhere in the house and he would miss me too much." But Susan decided that she was "happier" in their marital home, and instead of moving away, she wanted to follow through on the plans they'd made to renovate their home.

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"So that's where I began," she continued, explaining that she even tackled some of the "spooky" bits of the home, a 1920s Long Island estate, an update as well, given the house itself will be 100 years old soon. "Now they're not spooky, now they're really good," she joked.

Talking about some of the other parts of the home that underwent a makeover, like her china cabinet, the third floor attic that is now the "walk-in closet dressing room of my dreams," she gushed about it being a major "step" in her healing.

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"I'd never done anything like that on my own. We always did those things together," she explained. "I had no idea how it was going to help me to heal, but it did."

The Hot in Cleveland star also shares a close bond with her family, as a mom and a grandmother as well, and noted that she has a whole chapter on the "working mother" in her memoir, adding: "I begin by saying all mothers are working mothers."

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She noted that while her children were definitely put first in her life, she also found great joy in being in New York to make All My Children for all those years. "I was so happy to have this, first of all, wonderful part to play, in the best of hands with [series creator] Agnes Nixon." 

"And it allowed me to stay and raise my children, in normalcy, if you can say that, in the same town I grew up in, which has a great sense of community, great schools," Susan added, especially when it came to also taking care of her kids and having people she'd grown up with around her to aid in that process, coming in handy when her kids were teenagers.

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"I also could call friends I went to school with…and say, 'Are you sure the parents are going to be home during the party? Really? Is your daughter allowed to go to the beach after the prom?'," she fondly recalled. "These questions were very helpful to me to have people to talk to about."