Sonny Recast? General Hospital’s Maurice Benard Opens Up About the Issues That Left Him Missing Work

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The good news is, we want to assure you before getting too far, that General Hospital‘s Maurice Benard is OK. But for a time over the past month, he shares in his latest episode of State of Mind, it was touch and go. In fact, things got so bad for Sonny’s portrayer that he had to take a break from work and was nearly gone long enough that he would have had to be recast.

Benard’s fans, of course, know about his mental health struggles, so it’s not perhaps surprising to learn that about a month back, when, as he put it, “anxiety came knocking.” This time, though, things kept spiraling as he had a hard time telling the triggers. “A lot of that is my fault,” Benard says, “not going to therapy like I should and everybody should. You know, it’s just one of those things. Plus, I was playing a character on General Hospital that is bipolar and off his medication.”

He doesn’t think that was the main reason for what happened, but, “That may have been a little bit of the reason. The main reason was that I started feeling anxiety and then my son and my wife went to Europe and they’re the two people who, when I’m going through anything, can talk me out of it or talk me down.” To make matters worse, he wasn’t getting any sleep. “At night, I’d wake up in the middle of the night shaking, and then I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

The medication he was taking wasn’t working, and he didn’t want to talk to his wife or son because he was embarrassed and didn’t want to do anything to their vacation. Luckily, his daughters Cassidy and Cailey were there, but while he was seeing “doctor after doctor after therapy,” nothing was helping, he wasn’t getting sleep and things just kept getting worse.

His daughters and his friends were worried about him and praying for him which, as Benard puts it, “It’s just amazing the compassion that people have.” The praying helped a bit, but Benard decided not to take anything “and boy was that tough.” His friends, though, were there for him through it all, no matter the time, no matter the day, which is something Benard is incredibly grateful of.

Eventually, he knew he had to go to work at General Hospital, but he knew that he couldn’t. Fortunately, he has an incredibly understanding boss in executive producer Frank Valentini, who Benard notes “was the most generous, compassionate person.” He took two weeks off from the show, “and he was nothing but incredible.” But two weeks was all General Hospital could afford. The show had to go on, with or without him — especially with the heavy story Sonny’s currently in the midst of.

“If I had to stay away another week,” Benard shares, “they would have to recast. And I’ll tell you right now, if I had to recast I’d have been in really bad shape.”

After a couple weeks, his wife and son came home, and, while Sonny’s portrayer says that did help a bit, it wasn’t a cure all. Eventually, he went to a treatment facility, but came home after just a day. It was a “cool” facility, he notes, but it just wasn’t for him. “As soon as I get into the facility,” Benard shares, “my gut said there’s no way I can do this here.” So he came home, went back to work, and that’s when he let it all out. He’d had to shoot some
“pretty intense” scenes, which he assures us, we’ll know when we see them.

“After the second show,” he explains, “I was was angry and I was tense, and it was kind of like, ‘What more can I do here?’”

He went home and just lost it, going on, as he put it, a rant in front of his wife and son. He felt horrible for putting them through the whole experience, he felt like a failure, a bad father, a bad husband and just let it all out. Their reaction? “Joshua looks at me and says, ‘Dad, that was a great monologue.”

And that was what it took to start feeling better and getting back to himself. As he tells his viewers, don’t hold anything in. Sometimes to get through our darkest times, we have to let ourselves feel our emotions, let them out, and let go. “Listen,” he wraps up, “you can do it. You just gotta keep moving forward. It’s a great saying. My wife says it to me all the time: ‘You are stronger than you know. And that is very, very true.”

We, here at Soaps.com are just thankful that Benard is feeling better and neither he nor Sonny are going anywhere.