Credit: Chris D/JPI
If there’s one thing we know about General Hospital‘s Maurice Benard, it’s that he’s always as honest as possible with fans. If there’s a story to be told, he wants to make sure they get it straight from the source… even if on occasion, the source unintentionally leaves people with an incorrect perception. That, it turns out, is exactly what happened during one of the actor’s recent State of Mind vlogs. As a result, he took to Instagram in order to set the record straight.
“I’d like to bring something up just to clarify,” he told the nearly 350,000 fans who follow his account. “During a rough period recently, I spoke about being recast. And I can’t tell you how generous and great and amazing [executive producer] Frank Valentini was during that period.”
Benard has long been an open book regarding his bipolar condition and mental health in general. In fact, it was his longtime struggle and a desire to help others feel more comfortable talking about often difficult subjects which gave rise to the State of Mind vlog.
The incident in question found him struggling with anxiety which proved so crippling he wound up having to take a bit of time off work. In discussing how the situation played out, Benard realizes that “some people thought [Valentini] was threatening me in some kind of way to recast if I didn’t come back. And that wasn’t the case at all. It was the exact opposite.”
In fact, he went on to say, “Frank is very, very generous when it comes to that, I gotta tell you.” The caption accompanying the short video goes on to say that the exec “spoke to my wife, Paula, every day” and was “nothing but generous.”
Benard himself was anxious to step back into Sonny’s shoes after getting back on track. “Two week is a long time,” he says, “and I was ready to get back to work!”
Long story short, and in his own words, “It all worked out.”
