Marnie Schulenburg, the soap opera actress who portrayed Alison Stewart on CBS’ As the World Turns and Jo Sullivan on the One Life to Live reboot, has died after a battle with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. She was 37.
Schulenburg died Tuesday in Bloomfield, New Jersey, her rep Kyle Luker at Industry Entertainment told The Hollywood Reporter.
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Survivors include her husband, Succession and Sorry for Your Loss actor Zack Robidas — they married in September 2013 — and their daughter, Coda, 2. She was diagnosed five months after Coda’s birth in December 2019.
Schulenburg made her daytime debut as Stewart on CBS’ The Young and the Restless in 2007 after the character was re-introduced in the online production “Digital Daytime: L.A. Diaries,” which also starred Adrienne Frantz (Amber Moore on Y&R).
Schulenburg played Stewart on As the World Turns through the show’s cancellation in 2010 — she received a Daytime Emmy nomination that year — then joined One Life to Live as Sullivan when the ABC stalwart returned as a web series on Hulu and iTunes in 2013.
The daughter of a concert trombonist, Schulenburg was born on May 21, 1984, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She attended Barnstable High School in Massachusetts and DeSales University in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, graduating with a degree in theater in 2006.
A onetime gymnast, she appeared in plays for the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival and for the Dramatists Guild of America in New York City before landing on television.
Schulenburg also guest-starred on such primetime shows as Blue Bloods, Fringe, Elementary, Royal Pains and The Good Fight and will recur next season as Maggie Caysen on the Showtime drama City on a Hill.
She was released from the hospital on Mother’s Day to spend time with her husband and daughter, the website SheKnows Soaps reported.
“I know that me being here for [Coda] is the best gift I can give her,” she wrote recently, “but right now, it feels like settling since she’s getting a half-life version of myself. My mother showed up 100 percent all day every day for me growing up, or at least it seemed that way. I want to give Coda the same, but I must be kind to myself and remember that nothing is permanent.”
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