Nothing General About It

by Maurice Benard

  Once we had the keys to the property, life seemed so perfect because we had everything we could possibly want. We didn’t know the sex of the baby but we were excited either way, and Paula set about getting the nursery ready to welcome the new addition to our family. She had big beautiful murals painted on the walls from a Precious Moments calendar she loved and the focal point of the mural was a little girl praying, because religion had been a refuge for Paula herself as a little girl—she always says it saved her life.

  Our perfect world was shattered around Thanksgiving when we attended a movie screening. While I schmoozed with people at the after-party, Paula disappeared into the bathroom. A few moments later when she emerged, her face was completely white and I knew something was terribly wrong. She told me she was hemorrhaging, so I immediately took her straight to the hospital. The whole way there we both prayed that everything would be all right, but I had a bad feeling.

  Once the doctor examined her, they gave us the bad news—Paula had lost the baby and had to stay in the hospital over the holiday to undergo a D&C. We were shocked and heartbroken. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the what-ifs and all that would never be. Neither of us could bring ourselves to go into the nursery. We just kept the door closed.

  That year, we didn’t even decorate the house for Christmas. We were still grieving and processing our pain when we were blessed with a miracle in the New Year. It was in January that Paula announced that she was pregnant again.

  Our world had crashed and soared, all within a matter of weeks. This time, Paula was a nervous wreck, worrying about every detail. She stopped coloring her hair, drinking soda, or doing anything that might even remotely have a negative impact on the baby.

  It didn’t help our fears that right after she found out she was pregnant the January 17, 1994, Northridge earthquake struck. We were in bed when we heard a thundering rumble and terrifying roar as everything started shaking. I instinctively threw myself across Paula’s belly to protect our unborn child. It was suddenly pitch-black—the electricity went out almost everywhere, which is eerie in a big city because there’s always some source of light somewhere. It was so dark I could actually see the stars, and it felt like the world was ending.

  What sounded like a million car alarms began wailing in the night. We could hear everything in the house breaking, as the TV, the dishes, all Paula’s beloved Swarovski crystal, and everything in the cabinets was flung across the rooms by Mother Nature’s powerful unseen hand. When the shaking stopped, the sound of neighbors’ voices far away drifted toward us as they ran out of their homes. Once I knew Paula was all right, we ran out into the backyard, too, afraid that the dogs were crushed under a fifty-foot brick wall that had toppled like a kid’s building blocks. We were relieved when we found them hiding in the garage.

  But the aftershocks were just as unnerving and unpredictable as the earthquake. They kept going on for days, keeping everything swaying and the whole city on edge. Every time another one hit, we prayed that the baby was okay, and after several days, when things finally calmed down and the earth seemed to feel solid again, we were grateful that we were all safe and the house was structurally intact. So many people were less fortunate than we were.

  To keep myself distracted from everything that could go wrong before the baby came, I kept pushing myself professionally. Even though I had gotten the role of Sonny, could call myself a working actor, and was becoming a household name, I couldn’t sit on my laurels. I had always had my sights set on becoming a member of the Actors Studio, and despite having not yet been asked to join the prestigious and small club, I was determined to go back and audition.

  I chose a scene from American Buffalo, which I studied and practiced for weeks. When I walked into the small theater, I saw the judges: successful industry veterans Shelley Winters, Mark Rydell, and Martin Landau, who patiently waited as I took a deep breath, steadied my thoughts, and finally launched into my scene. I felt the electricity in the room and the judges seemed enthralled with the performance, but by now I knew you could never tell with auditions. You can overthink and second-guess yourself all you want, but when it comes down to it, you still always just have to wait for the call.

  Talk about anxiety, though; it was incredible to even be in the company of such talent. The Actors Studio had only admitted around eight hundred members since it was founded in 1947, including actors I respect such as Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Paul Newman, actors I had watched in movies growing up and whose skills I wanted to emulate.

  Luckily, my instincts were correct and I was given high marks for my audition. Before I could become a member, however, there were still more hurdles to overcome. For the next year I was required to attend sessions at the Actors Studio, and at the end of that time I would then have to audition again. If I did well and they thought I had what it took to join the ranks of the chosen few, they would extend an invitation to the club.

  I was focused on more than professional growth, though. The whole year of attending sessions in L.A., I was also going to therapy, which was a powerful tool I realized I had to use consistently in my life, along with taking my meds. In particular, I was working on my deep-seated childhood anger and the unresolved issues with my father. The story line about abuse at General Hospital had stayed with me and forced me to deal with it once and for all.

  I told H.J. I had held on to rage all these years from being hit by our father, but my brother didn’t understand why I was so upset. He had gotten hit, too, but he didn’t think it was that bad. I wonder if he just pushed it somewhere out of his consciousness, or maybe I was just the sensitive kid. But I kept obsessing over it and one day when I was discussing it with my therapist—as I had done for months—my therapist told me there was only one move to make.

  I had to confront my father in order to move past this.

  It took me a few weeks to wrap my head around that and work up the nerve, but I finally did and sat my father down with my mom.

  “I want to talk to you,” I began with such a serious tone that he and my mother exchanged worried looks, and then I took a deep breath. This was it, there was no turning back. “I want to understand why I was hit so much, I want to know why was I abused,” I said.

  My father was completely caught off guard, and so was my mother.

  “I didn’t abuse you,” my father said, stunned.

  “It hurt me, I felt abused,” I said firmly, and my mother had tears in her eyes as I continued, “You don’t know what it’s like as a little boy looking up at a six-foot-tall man who is full of anger. You don’t know how it feels to wait for that to happen, for that anxiety to build. I remember your footsteps, and the door opening, and that moment before you hit me is almost as bad as the belt cutting into me.”

  My father sat there for the longest time, and then he looked me in the eye and opened up a little. “My father hit me all the time. His father hit him, and his father hit him before that. It’s the way it always was,” he said, not understanding. “And your brother didn’t seem to have a problem with it, he didn’t turn out like you.”

  “H.J. wasn’t as sensitive as I was,” I said, standing my ground. “Dad, you can have five kids and do exactly the same thing, and if one of them has a precondition, it’s going to make that child have a problem even if the others don’t. But that’s not all, you always wanted everything to be perfect, but nothing’s perfect. Nothing. No matter how hard you try, something will always disappoint you, someone will always fall short.”

  When I finally stopped arguing my passionate case I waited anxiously for my father’s response.

  For the first time, he looked at me like he finally saw that little boy who was afraid of him, and he softened. “I’m sorry, Mauricio,” he finally said, and I really believed that he meant it.

  It was such a departure from the tough image I had grown up with that it took me aback, but in that instant I felt so much love for my father. It helped
me tremendously to hear those words. As I watched him making an effort to bridge the gap between us, I softened, too. I just wish I had told him how I felt sooner.

  “I know it’s what your father did to you, and his father to him, and it’s all you knew,” I told him.

  I think that was the first time we really understood each other, and our relationship started improving after that. I’m grateful it has evolved as I have.

  Now that I was at peace with my father, the role of my life—fatherhood—was imminent. Shelley Curtis threw Paula a beautiful baby shower at her home. Vanessa, Wendy, and two of the show’s other producers, Carol Scott and Chris Magarian, attended to show Paula the love she so deserved. It meant so much that Shelley opened her home to Paula and truly made her feel like she was family. I think Paula talked about that shower for a week straight after it had happened. It goes to show how much these beautiful, powerful women have been such a strong influence on our lives, and I will forever be grateful to them.

  Paula’s due date came and went without Paula going into labor. Another day passed. Then a week. I had waited nervously before, but now the anticipation was causing my anxiety to spike through the roof. While I was at work, Paula went to her obstetrician, Dr. Paul Crane (who delivered all of the Kardashians and Beyoncé’s babies), every day to have the baby checked and to see if Paula had dilated.

  A full two weeks after her due date, which seemed like a thousand years, Dr. Crane told Paula her amniotic fluid was dangerously low. Memories of the first miscarriage haunted us and Dr. Crane advised us for the baby’s safety to induce labor.

  We chose that Sunday. When the weekend finally arrived, our plan went off flawlessly: I drove Paula to the hospital, got her settled in her room, and things seemed fine. However, an hour after we got there, the baby’s heart stopped, and suddenly the Code Blue alarm sounded. As the hospital staff rushed to Paula’s room, I stood there in the chaos fearing the worst. I prayed for a miracle, and after several tense moments Dr. Crane stabilized the baby’s heart and Paula and I locked eyes, grateful but still frightened because it wasn’t over yet. He then prepped Paula for an emergency C-section, administering an epidural, and we waited. After a few tense hours, fortunately the baby’s vitals settled and we were able to wait for Paula to dilate and deliver without the procedure.

  But we were still nervous, so in the delivery room I tried to keep things light by talking to Dr. Crane, whose son also happened to be an actor, about his favorite actors—in between instructing Paula to push.

  “Jack Nicholson, right?” he told me, then turned back to Paula.

  “Paula, push . . .”

  I nodded. “Right! In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” We discussed a scene and laughed.

  “Paula, puuuuusssssshhhh,” Dr. Crane told her again. “She’s almost there,” he said, then went back to discussing another actor.

  Finally, after about two hours, on September 18, 1994, Cailey Sofia Benard decided to enter the world, and when we heard her first cry, I stepped into the real-world role of father. Paula, too, stepped into the role she was born to take on, motherhood, and finally had the one precious thing she had wanted most since she herself was a child: a real family.

  Looking down at the bundle in my arms, I couldn’t remember any of the reasons I had waited to have kids. Once I saw the little girl, my little girl, with her full head of black hair and her perfect face and tiny hands that grabbed onto mine, I was hopelessly hooked.

  Paula and I both had tears in our eyes as I cut the umbilical cord. It was nothing like I had ever felt before; it was surreal and amazing and overwhelming. You look at this tiny little being you know is now depending on you for everything. You know you have to take care of her and you suddenly feel this deep, natural instinct in your gut to protect her and you realize you will do anything for her.

  After my daughter was born, fatherhood became the number-one priority in my life and it’s apt that I received that most meaningful trophy before I ever got an Emmy statue. Paula’s priority was giving our daughter the stability she had never had. Our child was never going to feel unloved, unwanted. She would never have to live in survival mode.

  Paula had needed to escape her bad home situation as a child, and being a mother herself made her realize not just how she wanted to raise her child, but also that she wanted to repair the relationship with her own mother. So she started the slow, painful process.

  While I was enjoying my newfound fatherhood, at work another one of my favorite story lines was unfolding: one in which Sonny loses an unborn child. Sonny’s doomed marriage to Lily, played by Lilly Melgar, who’s fantastic, had a real beginning, a real middle, and a great ending, because in those days story lines lasted for months. When Lily died, she was blown up by a car bomb meant for Sonny.

  Because her death was so traumatizing for everyone, it made the scene later, when Lily came to Sonny in a dream with their baby, all the more powerful. It was a particularly emotional scene for me because my little girl Cailey, our amazing gift after losing our own unborn baby, was playing Sonny’s unborn son.

  After the birth of my child, I also finally got my own family on General Hospital when, in 1995, Mike came to Port Charles and the audience found out he was Sonny’s father. Mike was a grifter and I had the privilege to work on their deliciously difficult father-son relationship in scenes with the great Ron Hale.

  But what I remember most fondly about working with Ron actually happened outside the show.

  While I had been attending the Actors Studio that year, I never had the nerve to put up a scene because I couldn’t bring myself to put myself out there like that in front of people I admired and respected so much. When it was time to audition for the Actors Studio again, I decided to do a scene from I Never Sang for My Father, a Gene Hackman movie based on the play.

  The character I played was an angry son, which was interesting, in that I had gone through a similar journey with my own father. It required a scene partner, someone to play the father, so I asked Ron to step into that role. Performing the scene was nerve-racking, but it was an intense private tension I was learning to use professionally. The scene was charged and emotional between a father and the son who blames him for the death of his mother. I knew that Ron would connect to it on a personal level, and this, along with my own catharsis with my father, heightened the level of our emotions and we blew the scene out of the water.

  For once, there was no agonizing wait. I achieved a lifelong dream when I was congratulated on my performance and invited to become a member. They were so impressed they also asked Ron to join. That day is one of those sweet moments in life you relish.

  I achieved another step toward another dream in 1996, when Cailey was two, only three years after taking the role on General Hospital, when I was nominated for my first Emmy Award. I was so happy. At the time, Sonny had been going through a wrenching and critically acclaimed emotional story line that centered around his teenage friend Stone and Stone’s girlfriend, Robin, facing his AIDS diagnosis, decline, and death at only nineteen with passion and dignity. It was one of the best story lines I’ve ever been a part of and I’m still proud of the writing, the performances, and the directing; all of it was just superb. It will always be at the top of my list of favorite story arcs.

  I of course had watched Kimberly McCullough, who plays Robin Scorpio, pretty much grow up on the show and love her on stage and off. Scenes in that AIDS story line with her were powerful and intense and emotionally draining and she really held her own. The other amazing actor I worked with in the story was Michael Sutton, who played Stone Cates. Once Michael knew his character was going to die within a year’s time on the show, he came to me and asked me to work with him. We rehearsed relentlessly and he was also a sponge about learning method acting. His hard work paid off when he was nominated for an Emmy, as was Kimberly.

  My first nomination was more exciting than I ever could have imagined and I felt that finally my years of hard work were bein
g recognized. My friends and family who believed in me would be thrilled, and my friends and family who doubted me would finally have to admit I had chosen the right path. Back then, the Emmy ceremony took place at Radio City Music Hall and we attended the show in New York dressed to the nines, but I had to be escorted everywhere by six or seven armed undercover cops because crowds swarmed and people grabbed at me any way they could, holding on to my arms, my head, my ass, anything.

  In New York, it’s like Sonny’s the mayor, and crowds still stop me on the streets all the time. The beauty of the General Hospital fans is how loyal they are; even though I didn’t win that first year, it still felt amazing.

  It felt like being a rock star.

  Chapter Ten

  Isn’t She Lovely

  It wasn’t all about my career in those days . . . but it sure was taking off. Back then, Brenda and Sonny were the hot couple, and fans couldn’t get enough of them.

  The on-screen chemistry was undeniable, truly once-in-a-lifetime. A fan recently put a link to an early episode with Sonny and Brenda on my Twitter account and I couldn’t stop watching it because the heat was amazing. To keep up with the fans’ rabid interest in the super-couple, we were doing three or four loves scenes a week. It was ridiculous, but I didn’t want to look like a wuss, so I didn’t say anything. Paula didn’t want me to just be branded a “soap hunk” and we argued all the time about that because my ego wouldn’t allow me to admit to myself—or to Paula—that she was right.

  I needed to stand up for myself and tell the producers that I was a serious actor and wanted a story line to show that. Vanessa understood and didn’t take it personally, because she and Paula had become very close. They both wanted the story line to have more depth. Vanessa always teases me that Paula should have married her.