As a kid, “I was really into fashion,” says Tanisha Harper, an interest that her grandmother, “who would sometimes do fashion shows as a model and was also really good at making clothes,” cultivated during the summers they spent together. “I would pick an outfit from Teen Vogue or whatever and that would be our project. We would make a couple of outfits, exactly like what I saw in the magazines. So that’s what I thought I would end up doing; I thought I’d be a fashion designer or work in fashion somehow. I never even thought that acting was something I’d be able to do. It just never crossed my mind.”

Her fashion ambitions took a surprise turn when, at the age of 14, she was discovered at a mall by the owner of a modeling agency. Her mom was wary at first (“She was like, ‘No. No modeling. They’re all bad! They’re going to get you into trouble!’ ”), but when photos the agency took of her during a casual first meeting landed her an offer for a Nike campaign, Mom came around. “When she saw how much money it was, she was like, ‘Okay, where do we sign her up? Let’s do this!’ ”

There was, however, a caveat: that modeling not come at the expense of her education. “My mother and father were both highly academic and school was very important to them,” Harper notes. “They said, ‘You can do what you want, but you have to finish college.’ That was the reason I never left high school or college to focus on my modeling career. With that said, I made sure I got out of school as fast as I could! I did finish high school early and I did finish college early.” Looking back, she appreciates that her parents “wanted me to still be a kid and have those experiences of, you know, school activities and boyfriends and normal things. It was almost like I had two separate lives. I had school, I ran track, but then sometimes my mom would come take me out of school to do some big photo shoot. People at school would eventually see, like, ‘Oh, wait. We saw you on a billboard,’ or, ‘We saw you in a magazine.’ ”

When Harper made the move to Los Angeles after earning a degree in media arts and marketing from the University of Arizona, her prestigious modeling agency, Ford, sent her on an acting audition. “It’s kind of a rite of passage that happens; they like to test the water and see which models can become actresses,” she explains. “So they sent me on an audition for THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL.” She booked the short-term, nameless role of a model, “and I had such a blast. My agents kept sending me out on these acting auditions and I was like, ‘Maybe this is what I want to do!’ You know, ‘Forget the modeling. With acting, I could have a voice.’ I was no longer feeling fulfilled from modeling. I wasn’t really able to use my intellect.”

But her pivot to acting wasn’t the only career expansion she was going through at the time. “I’d always been interested in the writing and producing side of things,” she says. “I really started focusing on writing. I was an editor at Haute Living. I was working with a production company that did mobile content, creating TV shows back in the early days of streaming, and from there, I started working with a production company creating reality-type shows.”

With so many professional irons in the fire, “I definitely was burned out,” she admits. “When you’re young, you have so much energy and I was like, ‘I’m never going to sleep!’ I would be working on a pitch for a show while I was on a plane to do a modeling job, then I’d get back on a plane to film a TV show I was working on. It was nonstop action. But I realized, ‘If I’m going to do the acting thing, I really need to focus on it and take it seriously.’ I was getting lucky, initially, and was able to book jobs without having much training, but I almost felt like a fraud going into auditions when other people had been in school and training for years, working on their craft.”

Just a few years after she decided to focus exclusively on acting, the pandemic hit, and when the industry shut down, “I said, ‘Let me do everything I can to make sure I am one hundred percent ready to compete when everything gets going again.’ So I was getting my reels together, my website, doing online classes, doing self-tape [auditions], reading books. And lo and behold, that worked out for me, because when production started back up, I booked two little jobs right away and then I got this one!”

“This one,” of course, refers to the role of Jordan on GH, which became available when Briana Nicole Henry opted to leave last year. And as it turns out, her short stint on B&B couldn’t quite prepare her for the demands of a full-time daytime gig. At first, she says, “I was in shock! Soap operas are such a different world — the speed and the pace and, because I was stepping into a character that was already established, all the backstory with all the characters. But now that I’ve been on the show for a while, I’m really starting to understand the character and her relationships with everybody. It was very challenging in the beginning because I didn’t feel like I knew who Jordan was. Now that I do, it’s much easier for me to portray her the way I feel she should be portrayed and get the emotional timing right and that kind of stuff.”

Her increased comfort with Jordan is serving her well as the character’s story heats up on several fronts, from investigating the mystery criminal attacking the citizens of Port Charles with a hook to navigating her surprise lack of divorce from Curtis to trying to get to the bottom of Trina’s paternity. “I’m really enjoying Jordan,” Harper smiles. “It’s been wonderful to start to get to show her softer side, her vulnerability. I’m so grateful to Frank [Valentini, executive producer] for this opportunity. I always wanted to show that I can be a serious actress and do drama, and to be doing what I’m doing now, it’s a great challenge and I’m really enjoying it.”

Manhattan Project

Back in 2009, Tanisha Harper was living in New York City and filming two shows for Lifetime: the sixth season of PROJECT RUNWAY and the first season of its short-lived companion series, MODELS OF THE RUNWAY, “which followed the models around when they weren’t on PROJECT RUNWAY, and the drama that ensued.” She has fond memories of working alongside Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum. “Tim Gunn was so, so nice,” she raves. “My mom just adored him because he was just so lovely to her. He was so interesting and low-key funny; the little things he would say under his breath were so entertaining. Heidi was really cool, too — very friendly, very positive and encouraging. There were a lot of people on the show that came in, stylists and magazine editors, who were also really cool and shaped my style and fashion to this day.”

Did You Know?

She is friends with Lamon Archey (ex-Eli, DAYS) and Sal Stowers (ex-Lani, DAYS; ex-Cassandra, ALL MY CHILDREN) from their modeling days.

Her first series regular role was as Heather on 2006’s DESIRE, “which was like a prime-time telenovela,” and also starred Josh Kelly (Cody). “We ran into each other in the hall when he first started at GH and he was like, ‘Remember me?!’ I hadn’t seen him in so long and it’s so cool that we’re on the same show together so many years later.”

Just The Facts:

Birthday: September 18

Provenance: Born in Tokyo, Japan, “but my father had another job opportunity so we moved back to the States, first to California, then to Arizona.”

Brotherly Love: “I have one brother who’s about 10 years older than me. He’s married with two sons that I just adore.”

Kitchen Confidential: “I am not a chef, I cannot cook — I can make you a mean green juice or a lemon apple cider vinegar tea and that’s about it.”

PASSIONS Play: In college, she was a devotee of the NBC soap, which starred her current on-screen romantic rival, Brook Kerr (Portia) as Whitney. “My college roommate and I used to run back to our dorm to watch it. When she found out I was working with Brook, she was so excited. She sent me a message, like, ‘This is crazy!’ I was like, ‘I know, can you believe it?!’ ”

Howdy, Neighbors: Kerr is in the dressing room next door to hers (“She’s a good friend, such a doll”), “and Sofia [Mattsson, Sasha] and Maurice [Benard, Sonny] are to the left of me.”

Mood Music: “I have a little playlist I’ve made, I call it Vibes, and I usually have that on in the background when I’m home. It’s very instrumental, kind of slow, because I just want to feel, you know, vibe-y and sexy all day!”

Tuned In: “I watch DATELINE — I can look at that all day. I’m always on the case. I’m ready to solve a mystery. And the show I became obsessed with in the last year is called P-VALLEY. It’s about dancers in the deep South. My mouth is just wide open every episode.”


Mara Levinsky

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