ABC/Christine Bartolucci
We Meet Again: Nikolas (Adam Huss) and Spencer (Nicholas Chavez) have much to discuss after a nearly year-long separation.
When Nikolas and Spencer come face-to-face for the first time since February 3, 2023, except fireworks aplenty from the estranged father and son.
“Nikolas has come back to Port Charles with a plan,” sets up his portrayer, Adam Huss. “A couple of developments change that plan, so he has to think on his feet and change his modus operandi,” leading him to Spencer’s doorstep. When he lays eyes on his son, “I think in that moment, he is confronted with certain emotions and feelings that maybe he didn’t even know he was going to have to face.”
Nikolas does enter into the reunion prepared to face some tough questions from Spencer about his latest disappearing act. “Nikolas doesn’t back down from a challenge,” Huss asserts. “He’s got his eyes on the prize of what he needs, and what he’s got to take care of. I think he believes he can handle whatever is going to come his way. And yet I also believe that the yearning just to reconnect with his son at this time — at all times, truly — is still there, even though he had that moment of saying to him a year ago, ‘You’re no longer my son.’ I think in that time [he spent away from Port Charles], he had to think about what was important to him. And I think this is one of those relationships where Nikolas feels like, ‘If I am able to reconcile this, I am willing to go to whatever means possible to do so.’ I believe what transpires between them is sincere, and there is a sincere want and need from Nikolas to reconnect with Spencer. Which is why he is ready to face whatever he is going to face when it occurs. I also believe he would be willing to do whatever it takes in that moment to get what he needs. It’s definitely interesting, the direction it goes in.”
It is also very much on Nikolas’s mind, when he shows up at Laura’s, that his other son — baby Ace, who he has never met — is also under his mother’s roof. “He is not going to forget about his other son, especially if this other relationship [the one between Spencer and Nikolas] isn’t redeemable,” Huss says. “If he cannot fix the strain that is between him and his other son, guess what? He’s got another heir.”
The actor says that in preparation for slipping back into the role of Nikolas and playing out these critical Nikolas/Spencer scenes, he dug deeper into the history of that relationship. “I watched a lot of scenes between Tyler Christopher [ex-Nikolas] and Nicolas Bechtel [ex-Spencer],” he shares. “What a beautiful dynamic they had, especially in the scenes around the fire when Spencer got burned and Nikolas was at the hospital. Really emotional stuff.” And he found it easy to lock into Nikolas’s emotional reality when working with Nicholas Chavez (Spencer). “I had a great time working on these scenes with him. He’s such a wonderful actor. Nick and I were really able to have a journey together, I feel, in the work, and when I think about these scenes, I’m excited to watch them. I don’t always go back and watch my own work, but I’m like, ‘I want to see how these came out, because there was some really fun and interesting, dynamic things that occurred.’ ”
Huss hints that “I think people are assuming that they know where Nikolas Cassadine is going, what direction he’s going in, especially with his plan with Esme and how that seems to have been executed with him and Ava. But I think there are a lot of fun twists and turns that they won’t see coming. That, for me, was the most exciting part [of coming back to the show]. I think the writers knocked it out of the park and gave me a lot to explore and play with. I think they got to the heart of who Nikolas is and his vulnerability. He is a dark prince, he’s this privileged, strong manipulator, but the vulnerability and the heart of him is why people love that character. And I love to play that stuff, so it was really exciting to get to explore all these different angles of him.”
