When Adam Harrington popped up on General Hospital as the new John “Jagger” Cates, fans immediately took note. One thing immediately obvious is that Harrington did not look at all like Jagger’s previous portrayer, Antonio Sabato, Jr. (See what Sabato, Jr. said about it here.)
A Whole New Jagger
Recently, Harrington explained to Soap Opera Digest that he planned a new direction for Jagger. Of course, the first obvious thing he realized is he didn’t resemble Sabato, Jr. “That became very obvious when I went back and watched the original storyline!” the actor admitted. “My take on it was that it’s been 30 years; they obviously wanted to take this in a new direction and see what they could do with this storyline. And I also thought, ‘There is no way I can even touch what Antonio Sabato, Jr. did with the role in the past.'”
Although I know it would be jarring for fans, in some ways, I was very happy that I didn’t look like I was going to try to mimic or echo at all what they had done with that storyline,” continued Harrington. “Obviously, if they’re going my way, they were going to take this in a different direction with so much time having passed. TV is immortal and still very much fresh in people’s minds, but like I said, I took the recasting and looking so obviously different as them saying, ‘Okay, we’re going to take this in a different direction, and we are not trying to replace or touch what was originally a beautiful story.'”
Obviously, nobody really knows what’s happened to Jagger in the decades since he hasn’t been in Port Charles, which is part of what made it make sense to Harrington to have his own take on the character. “Well, the only thing I really had to go off of is his history, which is so rich, about his childhood, his relationship with his brother [the late Stone], and his relationship with Karen,” he said. “And then after that, what I just went in with was kind of the fuel of how he felt about Sonny [Maurice Benard] because of the past.
“He spent a long time away focusing on his career, and he’s coming back to a place with a lot of mixed memories,” Harrington noted. “So there is a little bit of, maybe he’s slightly reserved at first. He’s kind of on home turf, but not on home turf; he is coming in with a job to do that he has to focus on, and yet, it’s like anybody going back to a place that has mixed memories — you’re kind of thrown off your game a bit at first. So I just kind of took what was actually happening for me [as a newcomer to the show] and just thought, ‘This is probably how he’s feeling, too.'”
How do you feel about his new take on Jagger? Is there anything you hope to see him do? Let us know in the comments below.
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