The Shocking Music General Hospital Alum Nicholas Alexander Chavez Used as Inspiration

By now, General Hospital fans are used to the fact that Nicholas Alexander Chavez’s character, Spencer Cassadine, may not be returning for quite some time. The actor has been busy with his other projects. There’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story for Netflix, as well as FX’s Grotesquerie. For the latter show, where he plays the buff Father Charlie, he had a unique way of preparing for the offbeat character.

Stranger Than Fiction

In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Chavez discussed the incredible year he’s had. After all, he appeared in two hit shows which were his life’s dream come true. But acting is more than a passion or a hobby for him. It’s his calling. “My life feels whole and complete between the words ‘action’ and ‘cut.’ I live for those moments. I think that is the purpose of my entire existence. I can’t wait to see what the future holds,” he gleefully exclaimed.

While he watched many videos from the real-life trial of the Menendez brothers to prepare for Monsters, he had another method when approaching his Grotesquerie character. He had a playlist of songs that would get him in the mode. One of them was Don’t Do Anything Illegal by the infamous, real-world villain, Charles Manson, making his life stranger than fiction. With all that bizarreness fueling his creativity, the actor also exclaimed how truly thankful he was that the creator of both shows, Ryan Murphy, asked him to join the projects.

Life’s Purpose

Fans may recognize Chavez’s co-star in Grotesquerie, Niecy Nash. She’s been in tons of TV shows and films since 1995 but recently became incredibly popular on TNT’s Claws. Then, she played Simone Clark on The Rookie alongside Nathan Fillion. The character was then spun off into The Rookie: Feds, which sadly only lasted one season. By joining Murphy’s second show, Chavez was excited to work with Nash. In fact, he considered appearing alongside her “kind of a wonderful way for me to close the loop.”

GH fans know full well that daytime drama actors have a lot of lines to learn. And very little time to perform their scenes. Chavez recalled that the show was a good proving ground for him to develop his memorization skills. “That my heaviest day on set was something like 85 pages.” Everything in his life harkened back to his high school performance as the lead, Atticus Finch, in the play To Kill a Mockingbird. That one production made him feel “Like I was doing the thing that I was put on Earth to do.”