General Hospital
Steve Burton Shares He Starts Taping Back at General Hospital “Next Week”
One of the most highly-anticipated returns this winter and early spring will be that of Steve Burton when he reprises his signature soap role of Jason Morgan on General Hospital.
Following Burton’s announcement at the end of the General Hospital: 60 years of Stars and Storytelling special on ABC on January 4th, the series made it be known that Jason’s return would be imminent.
Now on the January 31st episode of the Daily Drama Podcast hosted by Burton and Bradford Anderson (Spinelli, GH), at the top of the show, Steve revealed he starts “next week” back at GH, although the Daytime Emmy-winner said he did not have an exact start date.
Photo: JPI
Anderson also shared that he is working next week at GH, but was not sure of the scripts or his scenes yet. Burton also stated that before going back to tape new episodes he needed to get a haircut in order to slip back into the role of Jason.
When viewers last saw Jason, it was back in November of 2021 when the character was presumed dead following the collapse of a tunnel.
Photo: ABC
In addition, since Burton’s GH return was made official, there has been a head writing change. Patrick Mulcahey and Elizabeth Korte are in, while Chris Van Etten and Dan O’Connor are out, making it all the more intriguing of just how the writing team will craft Jason’s story going forward.
So, excited to know that Steve Burton will begin taping new episodes as Jason next week at GH? What storyline would you come up with to explain Jason’s survival from the collapse of the tunnel and where he has been? Comment below.
I would like to see more of Jason Quartermaine than Jason Morgan. Carly would just not understand, but after all these years, Sonny would get it. Monica will be more than thrilled.
Just how often do we get to see Monica?
The timing lends credence to the speculation Chris & Dan were let go because of their plan for Jason’s return. Burton’s taping next week, which indicates Jason will be on screen early/mid March (exactly when Pat/Liz material is scheduled to air).
Hoping the new writers will write off Drew. No offense to the actor I think he’s wonderful and I love his Hallmark and GAC movies but this Drew was becoming totally unlikable.
Couldn’t he play stone cold on Y & R again or keep playing stone cold on DAYS? He is an awful actor! Gah, not looking forward to him taking over the show again. Aside from the equally hard to watch actor who plays Drew, the show has been great in his absence. So much screen time for old favourites! I’d hate to see it be all stone cold all the time again.
Better than “all Nina all the time” which is why the last two years of GH have been such a toilet spiral.
My guess is that the hired gun who’s been going after Sonny, Anna and Ava is a brainwashed Jason, working for that bad guy from the WSB and Pikeman, and previously captive of Viktor Cassadine. The giveaways have been all the comments about the assasin’s skills and inside knowledge. My guess is he’s missing his shots because some part of him doesn’t want to kill Sonny.
According to that idiotic “brain mapping” story from 2017 – which they came up with to explain how Jason’s memories ended up in Drew’s brain – Jason cannot be brainwashed, due to the fact that his multiple previous head injuries has left his brain in a similar state to a hard drive with damaged sectors that cannot be “over-written”.
Now on the other horn, Drew still has all of those Jason memories in his head. So he would have the knowledge of Sonny’s island and all of the secutrity protocols used there already stored in his head.
And many mortals have observed that something has been “off” with Drew ever since he recovered from the prison beatdown he suffered at the hands of Cyrus’s paid inmate thugs. I’m thinking something was knocked loose in his brain which might have somehow reactivated his previous brainwashing.
If Jason still has that tarot card in his pocket from his last trip to Cassadine Island, he might be the only one who can fix his brother’s brain, when he finally makes it back to Port Charles.
I forgot about the details of that stupid mess from 2017. Maybe I just forwarded past that. I bet the writers forgot too. My money’s still on Jason. I am deeply dreading this whole thing.
I hope they make Jason a really bad guy. It would be beyond Steve Burton’s limited acting ability to play anything other than the one character he plays on every show, but it would be more entertaining to see Jason go bad.
Jason is also Married to Carley but no one seems to be mentioning that.
Well not really…
They did have a wedding, but it wasn’t a valid marriage since Sonny wasn’t so dead after all.
Yay yay
If you watch one of the recent daily drama podcast with Burton and Bradford Anderson, Steve indicates that he is going to retire in a few years with his role on General Hospital. So it sounds like this is going to be his acting swan song even if it is for a few years he mentioned three to four years
Is anyone really ever “retired”?
I love that Jane Elliot has returned, love that Leslie Charleston shows up when she can…
And mostly.. the paycheque must be welcomed
Realistically, I doubt GH itself will be around 5 years from now, so that being the case, I believe Jason will be around for the remainder of GH’s existence.
Very true… and some days.. I wonder if anything will be !
You’ve been casting the death knell for GH for years (appropriate for your screen name). When Frank took over in 2012, few would have guessed GH would be around 12 years later.
It’s still pulling in respectable numbers for daytime, is a valued lead-in to most affiliates early news programs and Frank remains a wizard with the budget – refreshing and building new sets over the last 4 years.
Because of the unique ownership structure (the same Disney/ABC division produces, distributes and airs GH) there’s no extra hands in the kettle like the other 3 soaps. The recent primetime special – not airing in the summer or a dead Friday shows the network is still committed to the show.
ABC/Di$ney seems to be on board… for now. They had the primetime special, the change in head writers, bringing Jason back, all of these things do point to at least a short term commitment to reverse the toilet spiral of the last two years.
But on the other horn, we have the rumors that Di$ney is looking to sell off ABC entirely. Hell forbid somebody like Zaslav & Malone end up with the network and they start cutting any TV show that involves any sort of writing or acting and replaces it with reality dragonshit, as they have done on almost every channel involved in the Warner/Discovery fiasco. Even if it’s not that drastic of a takeover, you might still end up with a new regime that doesn’t have a lot of love for a show that’s over 60 years old, from a genre which is nearly extinct. They might switch it to Hulu only (much like Days moved to Peacock) assuming there’s still a favorable relationship between ABC and Hulu under whatever this new ownership situation is. Hulu itself might merge with “Disney+”, since that seems to be the streaming outlet for Di$ney’s content outside of the US & Hell. A “stream only” model might alienate some of the show’s older audience, as there is some percentage of that demographic who are still on the “technophobic” side of things, despite the fact that streaming video is very much a mainstream practice in 2024.
Very happy if people are happy that still watch the show! But give me the late Billy miller anytime I will never watch this show again the treatment of him I will never forgive you are the biggest idiots fake people I have ever known and trust me I know them all
Excuse me the show did nothing to billy Miller he left on his own ,he wasn’t a child,some fans need to stop treating their favorite actors like children
Believe it or not, there’s a small faction of mortals who think there was a “conspiracy” by Maurice Benard, Steve Burton, and others to force Billy Miller off GH and ruin his life. A Devil has tried to reason with such folks on another website, and they still push this theory.
The reality of course, is that Billy wanted to take his chances on a prime time career. Nothing wrong with that, in and of itself, it’s just that his timing could not have been worse. He left GH in 2019, having lined up recurring roles on the Apple TV series “Truth Be Told” and the USA Network show “Suits”. The Apple show was an “anthology” model, so they only needed him for the one season, and “Suits” pretty much fell apart after Meghan Markle quit the show and ran off to England to marry some ginger kid named Harry. Billy thought he would get a new gig in the next “pilot” season. Which he very well might have… except that was 2020. And nobody made new pilots after March of that year. And by the time things were “back to normal” in the TV industry from that, then you had the two strikes in 2023 which effectively shut everything down again. Except for – ironically – the soaps, because the actors were on a different contract.
A Devil won’t speculate on the reasons why Billy didn’t try to come back to GH (as he would have fit the character far better than Mr. Hallmark does)
I do wish for success of any actor that is discovered thru daytime and then leaves to try to find greater success elsewhere… history shows it is only a few that do achieve great success, I have admiration for the long term actors that make daytime a solid career.
It is those actors that make the 4 remaining show what they are… still entertaining regardless of how poor some may feel of storylines at times, we all keep watching.
General Hospital
Dee Wallace to Play the Late Jackie Zeman’s On-Screen Sister on ‘The Bay’
The Daytime Emmy-winning streaming series,The Bay, has revealed some major casting news. Former General Hospital guest star, Dee Wallace (ex-Patricia Spencer), who is best known for her roles in the blockbuster films ET and Cujo, is joining the show for its ninth season.
Wallace will take on the role of Charlotte Grace, who in story, happens to be the sister of Sofia Madison, played by the late Jackie Zeman (ex-Bobbie Spencer, GH).
In an intriguing twist, Dee came to General Hospital as the older sister of Luke (Tony Geary) and Bobbie. Patricia was key to the plot in the “Fluke” storyline where GH played out the harrowing backstory that Luke killed both his parents to protect himself and his siblings.
Photo: JPI
Dee was nominated for a Daytime Emmy in 2016 for Outstanding Guest Performance in a Daytime Drama Series for her work on GH.
Additional casting news from The Bay for season 9 includes: Mack Wilds, best known for his role as Dixon on 90210, joining the show as a recast Will Campbell. The character was last seen in season 3.
Photo: Oliviadabonet
In addition, Olivia d’Abo who played Karen Arnold on the the sitcom, The Wonder Years joins the show in the role of Felicia “Fifi” Garrett-Martin, the daughter of Lex Martin played by Tristan Rogers.
What do you think of Dee Wallace playing the on-screen sister, once again to the late Jackie Zeman on The Bay? Comment below.
General Hospital
GH’s Adam J. Harrington Reveals the Behind the Scenes Story of Becoming John “Jagger” Cates
When Adam J. Harrington showed up on all-new episodes of General Hospital, it shocked viewers of the long-running ABC soap opera, because he was the recast John “Jagger” Cates.
The character was previously played more than 30 years ago by Antonio Sabato Jr., and as fans of the soap have seen, Harrington’s version of Jagger and his circumstances are quite different. As it turns out, Adam was in the dark at what GH role he would be eventually cast in.
Speaking with GH co-stars, Steve Burton (Jason) and Bradford Anderson (Spinelli) on their Daily Drama podcast, Harrington shared the behind the scenes journey that led him to being the new version of John.
Photo: ABC
Adam shared, “I went into a chemistry read with Laura Wright (Carly) for a different character. I was told I wasn’t going to get the character, but hang tight, there’s something else. Then, that kind of took a couple of months and now we’re in December (2023), and then all of a sudden it was like, ‘here you go.'”
Once Adam was given a role on GH, he explained, “I still didn’t know who I was playing. I should have asked at that point. So the deal gets done, and I go, ‘By the way, who am I playing?'”
Photo: ABC
That’s the point where the GH powers-that-be let him in on just what he was about to take on. “They sent me a one sheet with John “Jagger” Kates in the description,” shared Adam. “It wasn’t until I went on YouTube and spent a good three or four days, watching all of Steve (Burton’s) storylines in the nineties (that I figured it out). By the way, they were fantastic. The production value … it was amazing the level of the acting, and the relationships you guys had. I really enjoyed it. So, that’s how I found out (about the character).”
Burton and Anderson asked Harrington about his thoughts on being a recast. “I thought it was important to go back to his circumstances and his upbringing, because that wouldn’t change no matter what he had become in the 20 or 30 or 70 years since we’ve seen him,” Adam shared. “I looked at what Antonio Sabato Jr. did and thought, ‘There was no way in hell I can even touch that or even come close, nor do I want to.’ The only thing I recognized was given his upbringing and what he’d gone through, it was a common sense of humor in there that’s either used defensively or as a way of getting through the world.”
Photo: JPI
As to how Adam should approach the part given it was a recast, he noted, “What I had been told from the brass is don’t worry about following that same emotional storyline. He’s gone away for a very, very, very long time, become successful and he’s come back. Basically, they were saying, you bring in you.”
Being part of the fabric of GH for awhile now, Harrington expressed, “I will say this about my experience so far. I am in absolute awe of the cast and the crew and watching how you do this on a train that refuses to stop. I said to a friend, ‘I’m on a train that’s going a hundred miles an hour, and they slow down to about 90 to kick you off after your scene is done.'”
So, what are your thoughts on Adam as John “Jagger” Cates after now seeing how the role has evolved and changed since its original version over 30 years ago? Comment below.
General Hospital
John J. York Back at General Hospital
On Friday, May 10th, General Hospital fans received some wonderful images and news. John J. York who has played the beloved Mac Scorpio on the ABC daytime drama series is back at work and taping all-new episodes of the show.
“Mac is back!” read the General Hospital social media post hashtag. John is pictured with longtime leading lady, Kristina Wagner and in other pics with Wagner, along with his TV son, Josh Kelly. York has played the younger brother of Robert Scorpio (Tristan Rogers) since 1991.
Previously, York announced he was taking time off from GH to undergo treatment for myelodysplastic syndromes and multiple smoldering myeloma (two blood and bone marrow disorders). This included chemo treatments, finding a blood doner match for blood stem cell transplant and more.
Courtesy/GHIG
Late in 2023, York shared an update on his health on social media. At that time, John expressed, “(Things) are actually going along very well. I’m still in the middle stages of everything.” He added, “I’m feeling really good. Hopefully, hopefully, things go the way they are, maybe be back on the show late spring, early summer.
York’s return pics were greeted with wonderful excitement from his GH co-stars on the Instagram post, including co-stars Finola Hughes (Anna) and Cameron Mathison (Drew).
Michael Fairman TV is wishing John well, and thrilled to see he is back at work.
Share your thoughts as “Mac is Back” to General Hospital via the comment section below.
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