Charles Shaughnessy fans are poised to get a double dose of the actor, who has made his GH debut in the recast role of Victor Cassadine, and will also be reprising his DAYS alter ego, Shane Donovan, on the Peacock streaming DAYS spin-off, BEYOND SALEM. Reports the actor, “I’ve always been interested in the idea, funny enough, of soap operas moving over to streaming. I’ve always felt that they should be doing this because it’s kind of a perfect set-up for streaming, with the continual storylines that you can cut into different sort of chunks. For a couple of years now, I’ve thought, ‘That’s a great idea,’ and then suddenly my agent called and said, ‘Peacock is doing a streaming one-off of DAYS, sort of based off of DAYS storylines and characters, and they’re interested in having you come on board for it. Are you interested?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely!’ So that’s how it came about. And I was delighted! I had a blast. It was just a wonderful week [of taping], being back with the gang.”
At around the same time, the opportunity arose to rejoin GH, where he had played the short-term role of Holly’s cousin, Alistair, back in 1984, shortly before he was tapped to play Shane. When his agent floated the idea, Shaughnessy recalls, “I said, ‘Well, sure! Okay!’ and it just sort of happened to coincide with this whole BEYOND SALEM thing, so I suddenly found myself appearing on the two different shows at the same time, one network, one streaming. It was a complete coincidence.” He’s enjoying himself immensely, noting, “I’m very excited to be working. It’s kind of fun to be in a whole different realm with different people and different actors and different characters and stories. That’s fun. So, I consider myself incredibly fortunate.”
