CHARLES SHAUGHNESSY ON JOINING GH

On September 2, Charles Shaughnessy made his triumphant return to GH but this time around, he’s playing the nefarious Victor Cassadine and not Alistair Crawford, Holly’s cousin, who he played for a week back in 1984, a few months before landing his long-term DAYS role, Shane Donovan.

While his stint as Alistair was brief, it was impactful, Shaughnessy reports. “GH really led sort of directly to DAYS because Shelley Curtis, who was by then a producer on DAYS, had been a director on GENERAL HOSPITAL and was very good friends with Emma Samms [ex-Holly], and the two of them got together and so when Shane came up, Emma said, ‘You know, you should see this guy....’ ” Shane became a mega-popular player on DAYS and remains such a fan fave that the actor was recently tapped to reprise him on BEYOND SALEM, the streaming DAYS spin-off produced for Peacock. “I was delighted!” he says of getting that call. “I had a blast. It was just a wonderful week, being back with the gang. I’d gone back over the years sort of once every blue moon for a funeral or a sort of one-off story for a couple of days, but every time I go back, it’s like you step through some sort of strange time portal. Nothing’s changed! It’s the same studio, same corridors, same kind of storylines, same characters — everyone a little bit slower [laughs], a little bit older, a little bit grayer, but otherwise, we just pick up exactly where we left off 35 years ago! It’s just crazy, absolutely crazy, how you just literally walk into a kind of time machine.”