There’s no update yet on who Steve Burton will be playing when he returns to General Hospital later this year, but his being back is likely to play havoc with the current Sam/Jason dynamic!
“I was shocked,” Kelly Monaco tells Soap Hub when she learned that her former leading man is rejoining the ABC soap. She is in the dark as much as viewers are about the details. “The execs have been keeping everything pretty tight-lipped.”
Here’s How She Feels
“Billy Miller [who succeeded Burton as Jason] and I have worked really hard in the past couple of years to reinvent Jason and Sam,” Monaco says. “I would be sad to see that taken away because I feel like it’s the ‘now.’
“Everyone throughout the building has been talking about it and [has] a version of what may be going on,” Monaco adds. “It’s going to take time to get used to it. [But] I’m not going to fight anything.”
A Tale of Two Jasons
This isn’t the first time a character’s previous portrayer has returned to a soap after he’s been recast. Wayne Northrup came back to Days of Our Lives after Drake Hogestyn had taken on the part of Roman.
On One Life to Live, Roger Howarth (Franco, GH) returned to Llanview after Trevor St. John had been cast as Todd. In both cases, the first actor was revealed to be the true character, leaving Hogestyn to play John Black and St. John to be Victor.
However, GH may or may not follow suit and reveal that Burton is the real Jason. They could trick the expectations that some fans have based on the DAYS and OLTL examples.
Monaco points out that if and when Sam sees Burton in a scene she might not even think of him as Jason. (An example of this on GH happened when Sarah Brown (ex-Carly) returned to the show as a totally different character — Claudia.)
“I have no idea,” Monaco says. “I don’t know if they’ll have us look at Steve [and think he’s Jason]. He could be a different character? They could take it in 1,000 different directions.”
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