While Sam’s passing still has a number of General Hospital fans up in arms, there’s no denying that emotional fallout has been a showcase for the likes of Nancy Lee Grahn (Alexis Davis), Steve Burton (Jason Morgan) and Dominic Zamprogna (Dante Falconeri).
Dominic Zamprogna Reveals The Lines He Added To The Script
During a recent chat with Soap Opera Digest, Zamprogna shared that he’d added a few lines of dialogue to make his final monologue opposite onscreen lover — and would-be play wife — Kelly Monaco all the more resonate:
“In the rehearsal in the morning, I said, ‘I’m gonna add a couple of things.’ Just things that were important to me and I felt would be important for the character that I wanted in there. It was tricky because it was sort of written — which I think was cool — that he’s in a little bit in denial of what’s happening. But I just felt that it needed [references] to real experiences, for me and for that character, and important ones. So I just said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna add these couple of things in here,’ and they were cool with it. You’re not changing the meaning, you’re not changing the scene, you’re just enhancing it.”
The actor speaks, of course, about the reference to Sam saving his life — metaphorically speaking, of course. Says Zamprogna: “I added that in because I was like, ‘She saved Dante’s life.’ When he was going to shoot Peter August and she stopped him, that was a moment where she saved his life. Who knows where he would be if Sam hadn’t stopped him from doing that that day?”
Due to the ABC sudser’s habit of shooting out of sequence, Zamprogna’s address preceded the scenes in which Dante learned of Sam’s untimely demise.
“I’ve never really been quite so broken down in a scene as I was in those scenes leading up to [the bedside monologue] when Nancy’s holding my face. It kind of took me by surprise. We did the other scenes with Sonny in the hallway, and when Dante comes off the elevator with Rocco and that scene with Nancy, which I didn’t really plan to be that [emotional].
“It was just, in that moment, the way she was describing how Sam had taken her last breath … She just did it so beautifully, and the way she described it reminded me of times I’ve experienced that loss in real life, and it just painted this unbelievably sad picture in my mind…
“There are moments where you’re really proud of the amount of work that you put into something and the result, and this is that for me. It was really, really important to me, and to my work and to Kelly and what we built over the last four years to make it as real and meaningful as possible. And I left work that day feeling like I’d done some of the best work I’ve done on the show, and that felt good.”
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