Exclusive: GH’s Van Hansis (Lucas) On The Tragic End Of His Daytime Love Story
On General Hospital, Brad Cooper has been pushing hard to work his way back into the heart of his ex-husband, Lucas Jones. The duo’s 4-year marriage crumbled in 2020 after Brad was busted for the years-long deception he perpetrated on his husband (and others): passing off Nelle and Michael’s son, little Wiley, as the child he and Lucas had been poised to adopt when the real baby in question (who was Willow and Shiloh’s biological offspring) tragically died shortly after his birth.
Van Hansis stepped into the role of Lucas last year, long after Brad and Lucas’s union ended in divorce. But prior to joining the GH ranks, the actor played another legacy gay character: Luke Snyder, the son of heroine Lily Walsh Snyder on As the World Turns. During Hansis’s 2005-10 run in Oakdale, Luke had two major love interests. The first was with Noah Meyer, and the pair broke new ground in 2007 by sharing the first gay male romantic kiss in soap history. After they split, Luke found love again with Dr. Reid Oliver, who was tragically killed in the show’s final days in 2010 when his car was struck by an oncoming train.
Happily Never After
Same-sex relationships are still a rarity on daytime, but they were even less common during Hansis’s ATWT days. Reflecting on his experience on the show, Hansis says that playing a high-profile gay character with an actual, on-screen love life “was such an honor. Coming in to daytime, I was not from a family that was a daytime-watching family. When it got announced that I’d be playing Lucas, so many people in different parts of my life kind of came out of the woodwork and they were like, ‘Oh, my family’s always loved General Hospital,’ or, ‘My sister watches it every day,’ or, ‘My mom has watched it since she was a kid.’ I wasn’t part of a family like that, so I wasn’t really familiar with daytime, and therefore I wasn’t really familiar with what was happening socially on daytime. I didn’t really realize how impactful that character and his relationships were. But in retrospect — and also, with time and with age — I do, and now I can really look back at that as a really wonderful gift, to be able to play that and to be part of something that, I think, in a small way, opened some doors. And I know for a fact that it changed some points of view from fans at the time, who would write to me about it. It was a really, really special moment in my life. And I think I’m only beginning to understand that specialness as time goes on.”
Reid’s death in the waning days of ATWT eliminated the possibility of Luke getting a happy ending in the romantic sense. In a 2017 interview with Soap Opera Digest, the show’s final head writer, Jean Passanante, admitted that she regretted how she chose to close out Luke’s on-screen life. Said Passanante, “On World Turns, at the very end, we had this great character, Dr. Reid Oliver, the boyfriend of Luke. I’m really sorry we killed him off. I took a lot of heat for that at the time and I said, ‘No, it’s a great story, he gives his heart to Chris Hughes!’ But now that I have it to reflect on, I should not have done that. He and Luke should have gone into the sunset happily ever after. That I’m sorry about, even though I defended myself at the time.”
Hearing Passanante’s quote for the first time, Hansis says, “That’s so interesting; I didn’t know she’d said that. I do remember when the show ended that there were a lot of fans who really felt a certain way about it because most people did get a happy ending, but then the gay characters didn’t. And I totally, totally understand that mentality and I understand that point of view [coming from viewers]. I think my last scenes I shot on the show was Luke listening to Reid’s heart beating in Chris’s chest — and I remember that for me, as an actor, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is such an awesome thing to play!’ And so maybe [how I felt about it at the time] was a little selfish on my part, you know? I was not necessarily thinking about what it meant [in the bigger picture] for it to end that way, especially for it being one of the first big gay male relationships in daytime. But then there were also a lot of people who were upset because Luke and Noah didn’t end up together. So I don’t know; maybe if they were going to kill Reid off, then there should have been some hope for Luke and Noah [reuniting], so it wasn’t just like, ‘Luke is sad by himself, and Noah is sad by himself, and Reid is dead!’ ”
Concludes the actor, “With something like Reid dying, I can see why it affected people a lot and I can see why people were so upset with it. And I get it! And I think they’ve got justification in that.”
Reid ‘Em And Weep: Luke’s ATWT ending was anything but happy, coming as it did on the heels of love interest Reid’s (Eric Sheffer Stevens) demise.
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Soap Opera Digest does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.