Nothing General About It

by Maurice Benard

  I wanted Sonny to be a combination of traits from characters I had liked growing up: questioning and strategic like Columbo; cool like Billy Jack; quietly powerful like Michael Corleone in The Godfather; and Jimmy Doyle in New York, New York. These guys all had an intensity about them because they would, at any cost, take you down to get to the truth. I also decided to infuse Sonny with a little-boy quality, to counter the danger that is obvious. I never wanted anything for Sonny that wasn’t truthful.

  It was exhausting, however, to make him likable, because in the beginning he wasn’t even remotely a nice guy, he was mean and he did despicable things. The story line at the time involved Sonny taking in a sixteen-year-old named Karen, played by the lovely and talented Cari Shayne, giving her drugs, and having sex with her. Like I said, Sonny was bad in those days. He’s nicer now, but I think fans like the character so much and allowed him to get away with so many things over the years because life is hard, and sometimes you want bad people to pay—and Sonny will make them pay. He might have done some horrible things himself—which I’m not excusing—but he was also fiercely loyal and would do anything to defend the people he loved.

  Although the world was enamored with the new face in Port Charles and the network was pleased with me, Paula started to notice something was off after a week. I walked around the house and played Michael Jackson’s song “Man in the Mirror” over and over. I thought I had a unique connection to Michael Jackson because, off my meds, my mind convinced me Michael Jackson was singing about me to me. Every time I played it Paula got a knot in her stomach, and she still hates that song. She knew something was wrong but figured I would adjust to the new show and my outlook would improve. When I had gone off lithium the last time, I hadn’t gotten violent, it had been more of a religious experience. Paula had not been around for the mental institution and my first breakdown, so she no idea what was in store for us in the coming days.

  Neither did the producers of General Hospital. No one knew I was bipolar because it was long before it was okay to admit things like that, particularly for guys—and particularly a guy playing a tough guy on a TV show. No one knew I was starting a downward spiral, not even me. I was hiding it from myself just as well as I hid it from everyone else. At work, in my dressing room, I had put up a poster of Al Pacino and every day I listened to “The Godfather” soundtrack over and over before scenes because I wanted to become Sonny, and not in a good way.

  It was only about two weeks in on General Hospital that I began hearing voices when no one was in the room with me. I heard them on set, in the car, and at home. They were everywhere and they were telling me I had to find out the truth, no matter what the cost. They were saying the truth would set everyone free.

  At the end of the two weeks, I was completely delusional. Since I’m a method actor, the people at work thought I was just really into the role. At home, I began behaving like my character, and as I said, Sonny was meaner then, tough and lethal.

  One night during a conversation Paula asked me, “Honey, why are you saying the lines we ran last night?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You’re saying the lines we ran. That’s what Sonny said.”

  I just shrugged it off, but Paula was worried for several reasons—most importantly because we had tiny guests. Although Paula still barely spoke to her mother, and wouldn’t step foot in her house, she wanted to help the little girls who were stuck there like she had been. So Paula often brought them to our house for long spans of time.

  The timing couldn’t have been worse.

  That night, the voices were at a crescendo, telling me I had to confess all my sins to Paula. When I did, it was like a cleansing; I was twitching and crying and my secrets came out in a heated, jumbled, emotional rush. I told her about going to the strip clubs, and falling for one of the dancers, that I had slept with a girl in San Francisco, and that I had tried to sleep with Kelly in Hawaii. Paula was mad, but she was also crying because she was so frightened. I was in a hyper-manic state and I was just getting started. I grabbed a bottle of wine and drank the entire contents right out of the bottle before throwing it at her and yelling at her to stop crying. I was beyond drunk at this point and held her toy poodle, Nyco, up over my head and said I would kill him.

  Somehow, Paula talked me out of that, but I continued to drink. The more I drank, the bigger the bravado and the scarier I became. I boasted how I was fine without my medicine and didn’t really need to ever take it again. Paula knew I had stopped my lithium but at the time she didn’t know any better and didn’t insist that I take it. She thought I was okay—until she saw I wasn’t.

  I heard a banging at that point and realized it was Paula’s knees shaking. Along with fearing for her own safety, Vanessa and Angie, who weren’t more than five, were asleep in the bed. As I bounced around the house in a manic rage I went in their room and Paula followed, panicked, and as she came down the hallway she saw me standing over them, saying it would be easy to kill them. Paula begged and pleaded for me to stop and eventually I bounced around the house some more.

  I put on “Man in the Mirror” at full volume and started singing it at the top of my lungs; I was convinced Michael Jackson was on his way over in a limo to save me. When I went into the other room, I slapped my dog Corleone, before beginning to cry uncontrollably. Paula seized this opportunity to grab her nieces and run across the street with them. She didn’t know the neighbors, but knocked on the door and begged them to let the girls stay there. She knew she only had a moment before I would realize she was gone, and she told the neighbors she would explain later. Although Paula was scared, she knew I probably would get more violent if she didn’t return, and, God forbid, if the cops showed up violence would definitely take place. I asked her later why she came back and I’ll never forget what she told me.

  She looked at me lovingly and said, “Babe, I knew the maniacal guy in my living room making threats wasn’t my husband. I knew your illness had taken you hostage and, somewhere inside, the real you was still there. I had no doubt and I was going to get him back.”

  I’m the luckiest guy in the world. If Paula hadn’t come back, who knows what I would have done, but I’d probably be dead.

  That night, Paula was on a mission to save not just her nieces or herself from harm, but to save me. She was as determined as she was desperate, grasping at anything that might help. Since the last breakdown had involved me talking to God, she thought the brother of a friend of mine from my modeling days in San Francisco, Vinnie Vanni, might be able to talk me down. He was religious and could quote entire Bible verses and if he could attempt an exorcism maybe that would work. She was willing to try anything. Although Vinnie did his best over the phone, it had no effect on me and only made me more belligerent, but Paula sat with me, hoping I would calm down and not hurt her. I continued to drink and eye Paula as if she were the enemy, and rambled incoherently for some time. At one point I threatened to kill Paula, but as I raged and hovered over her, she stayed, despite her fear, trying to talk me down.

  Eventually I dozed off, and that gave Paula a chance to call Dr. Noonan, the doctor in San Francisco who had diagnosed me with bipolar disorder. She told him what was happening and begged for his help and Dr. Noonan called in a prescription for a tranquilizer. After Paula ran to the drugstore to pick it up, once again she risked returning to the house, and when she entered, I had woken up and was waiting with a broken bottle. She ran into another room and called Danny, pleading with him to come help her get me to take the medication. That would be much easier said than done, because that night I thought I was a messiah and wanted total truth from all beings. When Danny arrived, I agreed to take the tranquilizer but I insisted first we had to go to Danny’s house.

  “Let’s confront the devil!” I yelled.

  It was the middle of the night and his wife would be asleep, so they tried to talk me out of my demand, but I wasn’t swayed. When they realized they couldn’t dissuade me from
my mission of truth, Paula and Danny went with me, and once we got to Danny’s house I ran inside before Danny could stop me. I leapt up the stairs two steps at a time, until I burst through his wife’s bedroom door. She woke up, startled, and when she saw me, wild-eyed, she screamed.

  “Do you believe in God?” I asked her as she jumped out of bed. “You sold your soul to the devil!” I continued yelling at her as she barricaded herself in the bathroom.

  I was making no sense, out of my mind with mania, and she screamed at me to leave, but I didn’t, I continued instead to hurl accusations through the door.

  By this time Danny had gotten to the bedroom and was trying to pull me away from the door, but it got worse and I started yelling, “Devil get out!” as if I were trying to cast a demon from her. After a struggle, he somehow got me out of the house, but I was screaming the whole way. I finally calmed down a little once we got to the car, but I refused to get in and insisted I was returning home on foot, so Paula and Danny had no choice but to watch me walk away into the darkness.

  On the way home, I passed a Catholic church and decided to go inside, but as I entered, in my manic state, wearing dirty sweats and seemingly indigent, the priest stopped me, telling me I couldn’t come in the church dressed like that. Troubled, and wandering back into the dark alone, I decided to leave the Catholic Church for good.

  By the time I got back home, Paula and Danny were waiting for me and I was so exhausted I agreed to take the tranquilizer, and finally went to sleep. The next day, the deep, dark depression hit and I wouldn’t go out of my room, and Paula had to make the call to my brand-new employers at General Hospital to tell them I was sick and needed a week or two off from the show. In soap time, it was like asking for a year, because the story lines were dense and intertwined and being gone required huge scheduling changes that impacted everyone and everything.

  We were both terrified this might be the end of my new job, but Paula made the call and explained that something was terribly wrong with me and she was talking to a psychiatrist and would update them. Instead of cutting their losses and firing me, the producers stood by me, and as Paula continued to update them, they made it work with the show’s story line, rescheduling everything so I could be absent from Port Charles.

  Meanwhile, Paula sent me to a psychiatrist down the street that we could walk to, but I scared him the very first session when he tried to ask me questions.

  “Fuck you, motherfucker, don’t fuck with me!” I screamed, and jumped at him.

  Paula took control and made me sit down, but I knew the doctor was terrified and that emboldened me. It was very tense and I resisted his help, although I did take the medication he prescribed to knock me out that first day, and somehow Paula convinced me to start taking my lithium again.

  After two weeks of going to therapy daily, and the medicine getting back into my system to even out my mania, I had to face the real world, and that meant returning to the set. It was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. It was difficult being the new guy on the show, and now on top of that I had no confidence, was depressed, and didn’t have a confidant there who I could talk to or who I felt would understand.

  My first day back I walked onto the strip joint set and had to do a scene where Karen tells Sonny her father abused her. It hit way too close to home and I began tearing up, remembering my father hitting me. I couldn’t control my emotions or the tears, but I needed to because I was the bad guy. No matter how hard I tried, I was too fragile to do it, and I couldn’t stop crying or finish the scene. I finally had to leave the set, and I was sitting on the couch in my dressing room, still crying, when Shelley Curtis knocked on the door and came in. She sat on the couch next to me and patiently listened.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to get through this,” I told her.

  She looked at me and said, “You can do it,” and I could tell she believed that.

  “I don’t think I can.”

  But she wouldn’t give up on me and I will never forget what she told me next. “We will take it page by page, line by line, word by word if we have to,” she said as she hugged me.

  This time, unlike my experiences after the first breakdowns, the pressures were enormous because the show was my livelihood; my future as an actor depended on me showing up every day. Millions of people were watching me as I healed, without even knowing what I was struggling to overcome. It was the lowest point in my life, next to being in the mental institution, but even though I wanted to quit General Hospital, Shelley and Wendy convinced me to stay and worked with me so I could recover and rebound.

  These two incredible strangers who hired me were giving me a second chance, and they still believed in me even when they didn’t have to and probably had good reason not to. They had just taken over the show and were facing enormous pressure as well—they were going in a bold new direction and nothing was as bold as keeping me on and betting on me. I wanted to show them they weren’t wrong and I could deliver what they had seen in me that first day we met. They were the most gracious and kind producers in the world and that is something for which I will always be grateful.

  Although it was initially only a six-month arc for my character, Sonny’s popularity exploded almost overnight, and they asked if I could continue in the role and extend the six months to a year.

  I agreed, and then my real journey began.

  Chapter Nine

  Sweet Child o’ Mine

  When I met the great Anthony “Tony” Geary, who played Luke Spencer, I knew immediately there was something unique about him—a gravitas both men and women love. Our characters became partners in crime on the show, and we became dear friends off-screen, but let me just say he scared the hell out of me initially.

  The first time I had to do a scene with him I was literally shaking. We were on the stairs to Luke’s house and the script called for him to grab me. Well, when we got to that part of the scene, he grabbed me so hard, with so much force and power from his character, I was so in the moment as Sonny that I pushed back just as forcefully and ad-libbed to get his damn hands off me. Tony told me later shooting that scene was when I gained his respect.

  As we started to work together, I also got to know Genie Francis, who played Luke’s soul mate, Laura. Their chemistry was pure magic, and I always respected her talent—subtly layered and full of emotion. She’s also one of the kindest, sweetest people I know, and just like Tony, she wound up being a close friend.

  It was actually Tony who brought up the idea of a life for Sonny outside of crime when he asked one day, “Hey, Maurice, do you want to just be Tonto to my Lone Ranger?”

  I weighed the question before answering honestly. “Tony, I enjoy working with you a lot. But, yes, I’d love to do my own thing.”

  He winked. “Then go upstairs and ask them for a family.”

  I then told the writer and producer Claire Labine that I was happy doing the show, but that I would like for Sonny to have a fuller, more rounded character life—and if they couldn’t accommodate that, I understood. Of course, throughout that conversation I knew they were also aware that my contract was coming up for negotiation, which gave me an edge.

  That’s when Sonny finally got a life. First Claire gave him a girlfriend. Vanessa Marcil, who originated the popular role of Brenda, had been on the show a year before I arrived.

  From the minute we both touched the same suitcase on the dock after they put us in a scene together, it was inevitable. Fans ate it up and we became an on-screen couple. I loved working with her. Off-screen, I asked her one day if she wanted to be a good actress or a great actress.

  Of course she wanted to be great and accepted my challenge to work her ass off. Which she did. She was like a sponge and wanted me to teach her everything I knew about method acting.

  Around the same time I saw a scene with Steve Burton, who plays Jason Morgan, and told the writers his talent was wasted. I asked them to write a story line for us and they put Jason in a terrible car a
ccident, after which he forgot he was a Quartermaine and came to work for Sonny. The minute we did a scene another great fan favorite was born—Sonny and Jason are like Batman and Robin, they need each other. We started working together all the time and it wasn’t long after that when I gave Steve the same challenge that I had given Vanessa about acting.

  “You’re deep and you’ve got talent, but it’s wasted. You want me to help you out? You want me to teach you the method?” I asked him one day at work.

  Like Vanessa, he was all in. We went over scenes in my dressing room; sometimes he came to my house, where we worked for hours. On set, he took intensity to a new level and started being intense even while pouring a cup of coffee, which got the attention of the director.

  “Steve, what are you doing?” the director asked.

  “Maurice is teaching me the method.”

  The director groaned. “Okay, Steve, I get it. Maurice’s acting method is great. But you’re pouring a cup of coffee.”

  Everyone erupted into laughter, including Steve.

  I was happy, too. At last I was bringing in money and could support my family without taking any more funds from my father. When I found out in the summer that I was going to be a father myself, that added a whole other layer of excitement. Paula, of course, was over the moon, and while I was thrilled, I also felt overwhelmed by emotion. It was exciting and a little terrifying to think about being responsible for a little human being—and it made me even more aware of my responsibility to myself, and to Paula. I had vowed to her I’d never go off my meds again, and now staying on lithium became more important than ever.

  With the big upcoming change, the time felt right to buy a home. Paula found a beautiful rustic-wood-style house nestled off Cahuenga Boulevard on North Knoll Drive with enough property to eventually build a barn for the horses Paula always dreamed of owning and the pool I had always wanted. It reminded me of homes in Montana—big wood beams, open space, and lots of windows looking out on a gorgeous private view. There was plenty of space for what we would affectionately call Paula’s Ark—every animal in need would eventually find its way to her.