General Hospital’s Michael is ‘Fighting for Survival’ After Drew’s Accusations, Says Rory Gibson (EXCL)

Michael Corinthos is in the thick of the storyline action on General Hospital as his character ascends to the top of the suspect list in the ongoing brouhaha over who shot Drew Cain, thanks in no small part to the congressman pointing the finger at Michael upon regaining consciousness! As Michael scrambles to stay out of prison, Soap Opera Digest caught up with the actor who plays him, Rory Gibson, who is loving life at GH even as Michael’s gets messier by the minute. “They keep me busy over here,” he grins. “I’m having so much fun and there’s so much exciting stuff happening.”

Having secured custody of his children, Wiley and Amelia, when he divorced Willow, Michael thought that things might finally be calming down after a tumultuous period. Of course, that hope was dashed when Drew took not one but two bullets on that dark and stormy night. “It’s been a very interesting combination of, ‘Oh, I’m over here chatting with Molly and things are hunky-dory, fine and dandy,’ and then two episodes later, it’s like everything’s gone to hell!” Gibson observes.

The actor is rooting for his character to be innocent of pulling the trigger. “I feel kind of conflicted about it,” he admits. “On the one hand, Drew has definitely done the most and I’m sure Michael definitely wants to [see him gone]. But at the same time, it’s almost like, if he did that, then everything that Drew has told Willow about him becomes true — like, Michael really is just a monster, this terrible person that he’s painted him out to be in her eyes.”

 

While viewers don’t yet know exactly what Michael was up to the night of the shooting, it has been made clear that he was at the scene of the crime, glowering in his car. Asked what was going through his head while filming Michael’s vehicular brooding, Gibson laughs, “What was going through my head is that my underwear is soaking wet!” He explains that the scenes were shot on location, “and it was bright outside — it was nice and sunny, so they had to [use lighting] to cheat day for night. I was standing outside this car and they had a rain mechanism over me and just like drenched me instantaneously and then I get into this car. I remember just, obviously, focusing on the scene and having to be like, ‘Okay, intense. Brood, brood, brood,’ but at the same time like I was thinking, ‘One, I’m soaking wet, and two, I feel bad for whoever’s car this is!’ I didn’t even remotely try to dry off so that car’s interior got drenched!”

A sticky situation indeed, what with Drew caring less about who actually shot him and more about incriminating Michael so that he can secure a reunion with Willow by restoring her access to the kids. Knowing the incentive Drew has, Gibson says, “Michael is panicked, honestly. How I try to play Michael is that at his core, he’s a relatively composed, stoic [person], but it’s all kind of a shell of a lot of the internal frustration that he kind of constantly has going on. In this moment, he’s panicked because everything’s unsettled. He’s missing Daisy, he’s missing Sasha, so it’s not like everything in his life is perfect by any means, but he does have legal custody of his children, and if this gets pinned on him, all of that goes away, and there’s no way he’s ever getting them back. So, I think he’s in a state of true panic. He’s fighting for survival, essentially.”

All of which leads Michael to feel like partnering with Jacinda is his best bet — even though the cop he’s trying to sell his story to is also his brother! “At this point, it’s pure desperation,” declares Gibson. “He knows Dante’s a smart guy, and I think he knows Dante’s not going to buy this, but he doesn’t really have much of a choice. He’s trying to work in some sense of reality because he was with Jacinda earlier that night. He’s just trying to grasp at straws here and he’s just trying to make whatever he can make happen happen. I don’t think he believes that Dante will buy into this, but he’s holding out hope that it’ll be enough to clear his name regardless. He doesn’t necessarily need Dante to believe him. I’m sure he wants to — it’s his brother, who cares about him, and he cares about his opinion. But it’s not about needing Dante to believe him. It’s about needing evidence to hold up.”

Another potential hazard for Michael is that his great aunt, Tracy, could place him at Drew’s house on the night of the shooting, although she’s made it clear that she has no plans to run to the cops with this info. “That’s a complicated one,” Gibson allows. “I think he’s feeling kind of conflicted about that because on one hand, he does realize how close Tracy and Monica are, so there’s that glimmer of a potential alliance there, like, ‘Okay, maybe she’ll have my back on this. She hates Drew. We don’t always get along, but she doesn’t hate me and she loves my grandma,’ But at the end of the day, of course, it would be much better if no one knew Michael was there at all! So that’s still definitely stressing him out a bit!”