On General Hospital, Professor Dalton is busy trying to shove a teenage boy into a jail cell, convinced Rocco deserves to be charged like an adult for breaking into his lab. It’s the kind of icy righteousness that makes Laura want to unplug his computers and change the locks. But the man behind the menace has his own story to tell — one that loops back 20 years, long before GH hired him as its newest academic nightmare. And what Daniel Goddard revealed about the role he almost landed feels like a twist even Port Charles couldn’t script.
Key Takeaways
- Daniel Goddard once auditioned for GH’s Patrick Drake — a role that would have made him Emma’s father.
- Goddard said he felt he wasn’t the right fit for Patrick, even after multiple callbacks.
- His early soap auditions included As the World Turns and One Life to Live, before landing Cane on Y&R.
- Goddard later sensed Jason Thompson was destined to play Y&R’s Billy after leaving GH.
- He now sees his career as a path shaped by timing, destiny, and the roles meant for him.
The Role That Nearly Changed His Life
Goddard spoke with Soap Opera Digest, reflecting on those early days when he was just another hungry actor knocking on the doors of multiple soaps. GH was one of them, and the role he nearly stepped into would have rewritten a big chunk of the show’s history — Patrick Drake.
He remembers those meetings clearly. Sitting in casting director Mark Teschner’s office, reading the part, feeling out what the character might be. As he put it, “I read for the role, Jason got cast, and then I got cast over at Y&R within a couple of months of that. So, there’s this bizarre kind of, like, crossover moment, where I’m like, ‘That’s the girl that could have been my daughter if I had been cast in the role that Jason Thompson got!’”
What makes the story even stranger is that the girl in question — Emma — is now the teenager hunting Dalton down, determined to expose whatever he’s really doing in that lab. A different casting choice and Goddard would’ve been playing her father instead of her favorite suspect. The actor recalled reading for the part and noted, “I kind of felt in a way that I wasn’t right for Patrick when I read it.” He added that he returned twice before Thompson officially won the role.
A Career That Bent Where It Needed To
His road to GH wasn’t just paved with one near-miss. Goddard also tested for ATWT (for Brad Snyder) and OLTL (for Nash Brennan), and each audition nudged him toward something else — including Cane Ashby on The Young and the Restless. And later, when Patrick opened up on the GH side while Billy cracked open on the Y&R side, Goddard felt another strange flicker of recognition: “When I heard they were recasting Billy, Jason had just left GH. I don’t know what it was, but I thought, ‘Oh, Jason is gonna come and play Billy Abbott.’”
Looking back, Goddard sees the tapestry. The way roles land where they’re meant to, how one door not opening often means someone else needed to walk through it. And now here he is — finally in Port Charles, finally part of GH — playing a man whose secrets may reshape the very family he once almost belonged to.
And working with a cadre of villains, Dalton may end up reshaping Port Charles and possibly the world.
