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General Hospital’s Cameron Mathison Drops New Intel About the Role That Was So Hush-Hush, ‘I Was Given Little Decoy Names’
Wednesday, August 4th, 2021

Aspects of his new alter ego “really play to my strengths,” he says.
As the countdown to Cameron Mathison’s General Hospital debut intensifies, the actor is finding it harder and harder to keep his lips zipped about the top-secret role that he’s playing. (The smart money’s on the “late” Drew, of course.) In a recent Soap Opera Digest interview, he says that even he wasn’t fully filled in by the show. “I was given like little decoy names of characters and storylines.”
As such, “it’s been also very easy for me to tell people I have no idea what’s going on — because I literally have had no idea what’s going on!”
Almost no idea, that is. The All My Children vet notes that his new character “is different [from Ryan], and also, in some ways, has aspects of it that really play to my strengths, too.”
Happy as a clam in Port Charles, Mathison has himself to thank: When his now-defunct Hallmark Channel talk show Home & Family was cut down to two days of taping a week, “I kind of reached out to [executive producer] Frank Valentini,” he recalls, “and I just said, ‘Listen, Frank, I’m going to have three days a week [off], and I don’t know if there’s anything, I don’t want to be presumptuous, you know I’ve always been a huge fan of yours and the show… ’
More: Watch Maurice Benard serenade his grandbaby
“I didn’t even practically finish the text or whatever it was. He just took it and went with it,” he continues, “and it’s amazing… beyond what I was sort of secretly [hoping for].”
Who do you think Mathison will be playing? Weigh in in the comments below, then check out the below photo gallery of the all-time greatest characters in General Hospital history — in order!
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<p>“Ugh,” we can just hear you saying. “Why is <em>she</em> on this list?” Frankly, it’s <em>because</em> the mere mention of the supervixen’s name can make you say, “Ugh.” Troublemakers who leave <em>that</em> lasting an impression are hard to come by — and harder to forget!</p>
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<p>They don’t make ’em like this anymore! The patriarch of the Quartermaine family was a blustering tyrant whose huffing and puffing did a fine job of hiding the fact that, underneath, he was really a big softy.</p>
<p>Whenever she walks into a room, you <em>know</em> that chaos is going to follow — and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Lucy may not be the conniver that she once was, but she remains as “quacky” and unpredictable as ever.</p>
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<p>Really, this long-running heroine should have her own action figure, because from the moment that we met her — when she was unconvincingly disguised as a boy, no less! — she’s been tossed from one madcap adventure to the next.</p>
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<p>Anna and Robert’s daughter is an inspiration, a cute kid who absorbed the blows that life dealt her — and there have been many! — to emerge on the other side a grown woman who is kindhearted, open-minded and far tougher than her warm smile might suggest.</p>
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<p>All it took was a big car wreck and a little brain damage, and Steve Burton’s squeaky-clean future doctor was reborn as a Mob enforcer whose love of tight black T-shirts was rivaled only by his love of Sam. (And, depending on the year, Liz.)</p>
<p>Fight us if you must, but for our money, Steve Hardy’s stalwart right-hand woman was the all-time most-tortured soap-opera martyr. Emily McLaughlin’s dedicated nurse never ceased to volunteer her big heart for breaking.</p>
<p>A tragic victim of circumstance, a stone-cold femme fatale or a little bit of both? With Maura West’s master manipulator, you can never be sure — but you’ll definitely tune in tomorrow (<em>and</em> the next day!) to see if you can figure out the vexing vixen!</p>
<p>By now, we’ve come to regard Maurice Benard’s dimpled don as <em>The Godfather, Part IV</em>. Formidable and flawed, the smooth criminal is a mass of contradictions that somehow add up to a character that’s as dangerous as he is appealing.</p>
<p>You know how you <em>know</em> that Carly is one of the all-time greats on <em>General Hospital</em>? The character’s withstood two and a half recasts (from Sarah Brown to Tamara Braun to, briefly, Jennifer Bransford, then Laura Wright) to remain an unstoppable force of nature, a freight train you’d be terrified to be in front of but more often than not find yourself willing to get behind.</p>
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<p>From Mob flunky to mayor, Anthony Geary’s infamous alter ego was fashioned from a mold that was long ago broken, one from which sprang the kind of absolute scoundrel who is as infuriating as he is entertaining, as irrepressible as he is irresistible. </p>
<p>Reunited with her birth mother? Check. Crushed on Mom’s man? Check. Abducted to a Greek isle? Check. Played dead? Nervous breakdown? Elected mayor? Check, check and also check. If it could happen to a soap-opera heroine, it happened to Genie Francis’ erstwhile Miss Star Eyes, along the way making her not just beloved but iconic.</p>

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