General Hospital Fave Reveals That He’s Returning for a ‘Meaty Storyline’

As General Hospital finally lets Trina — and all of us! — in on whether Curtis or Taggert is her biological father, mom Portia won’t have to face the fallout alone: Soap vet Gavin Houston is returning as Trina’s Uncle Zeke, he tells ABC affiliate station WJBF in Georgia.

The Guiding Light alum said that he was only too happy to visit Port Charles in the first place. Seeing actors like Maurice Benard (Sonny) was “almost like seeing people from your childhood.” When Houston’s interviewer referred to the gig in past tense, the actor corrected him, noting that he was “still on General Hospital, actually” and was “coming back for this meaty storyline in like, two weeks.”

We first met Zeke when he came to town for his sister’s wedding.

Credit: ABC

Elsewhere in the interview, the Brooklyn native opened up about the conclusion of OWN’s addictive Tyler Perry soap, The Haves and the Have Nots, on which Houston played Jeffrey Harrington for all eight seasons. He admitted that the finale took him and his castmates by surprise. (Spoiler alert: Most of the main characters were killed off!) “At first when we all got [the script], we were all like, ‘Wait… what?’ But then it was like, ‘Don’t worry. Nobody’s dead.’”

So “it was a little ambiguous for us,” he added. Since Jeffrey and his boyfriend were blown up by a bomb delivered to him by his stalker’s homophobic brother, Houston thought what, “Did I sneak out the back door?”

At the time that the series’ last episode was shot, the cast believed that they’d be returning for Season 9. “We didn’t know we were done until like a year after,” Houston said.

Catch up on all the latest General Hospital returns here and see where The Haves and the Have Nots ranks in our countdown of the best-ever primetime soaps here.