Exclusive: Scott Reeves On Wrapping His General Hospital Return As Steve
Best Western: Scott Reeves’s Steve and Alley Mills’s Heather headed out of Port Charles, bound for Sedona, Arizona.
Scott Reeves wrapped up his quick visit back to Port Charles as Steven Lars Webber on Monday, October 28. His return to the role he played from 2009-13 kicked off last week, when Steve came back to town as his mother, Heather Webber, was getting released from Pentonville.
Short But Sweet
The actor teases that Steve was likely relieved to zip in and back out of town without running into Olivia Quartermaine, who, back when she was Olivia Falconeri, he jilted in a dramatic way on what was meant to be their wedding day by confessing to murder in lieu of marrying her and heading off to prison in Memphis! “I feel like Steve was looking over his shoulder the entire time,” Reeves says. “He did run into Dante and that kind of sparked something in him; it was a reminder of his mother. But yeah, that was definitely on Steve’s mind! He was ducking behind corners and hiding behind vending machines [at the hospital], hiding behind his crazy mother.”
All jokes aside, “I can’t say enough great things about my experience coming back,” Reeves proclaims. And given how his return wrapped, it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that more appearances by the character could be in Reeves’s future. “Steve’s lost his medical license and has been offered the opportunity to potentially get it back by Curtis, Donnell Turner’s character, who was wonderful to work with,” he notes. “There are these under the table deals that were being made and I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, I just got out of prison and now they’re trying to pull me back into these nefarious activities! They’re giving me bribes to take my wacky mother out of town!’ But it was left very open-ended.”
When Reeves realized the story twist left the door open for him to return again, “I was excited,” he reports. “And I told Frank [Valentini, executive producer], ‘I’m totally open to coming back and exploring more.’ There’s so many different ways the story could go. There’s Olivia, there’s his sister, Elizabeth, Steve’s mother is on the loose again… Alley [Mills, Heather] and I were joking about that. I had so much fun with her! I was joking about trying to bribe her into coming back to Sedona, Arizona with me [where Steve now lives]. I’m in Arizona trying to start over and figure out who I am, what I’m supposed to be doing and how I’m going to move on in this life. I said, ‘I’ve got a great house with a really good basement that you could live in.’ And she said, ‘Well, who knows? In that case, we might turn out to be the next Bonnie and Clyde and go on another spree!’ She is so hilarious. But you never know what Heather Webber and her son could cook up [laughs]. We gotta keep it interesting, right?”
The actor cherished the opportunity to hearken back to his past, as when he was taping at General Hospital, his wife, Melissa Reeves, was working nearby, reprising her Days of Our Lives role, Jennifer. “It was like stepping back in time,” he marvels. “She was there [in Los Angeles; the couple is based in Nashville] the previous week working and then this [GH gig] came up and it just so happened that they asked her to stay another week to do some more shows the week I was coming in to do GH. So I got there and we’re getting up to go to work, she’s going to DAYS and I’m going to GH, and it’s in the same location that it was [when they were on each show regularly]. It was like waking up 20 years ago, or 33 years ago, before we had kids. I was like, ‘Wait a minute, this is so strange! I feel like we were put in reverse and pushed rewind 33 years ago! But it felt so good and so right. It felt like nothing had changed. Then we would come home and talk about our day. I really had to pinch myself. I do not take this for granted because you don’t get many opportunities to relive [a life you used to lead]. How many times do we talk about, ‘Gosh, I wish I could go back and just kind of live that day one more time?’ We were given the opportunity to do that. I was like, ‘Wow, honey, this is so strange, it’s like we’re getting to relive what it was like our first decade of doing this together.’ ”
The tragic death of Drake Hogestyn, who played John Black on Days of Our Lives, only made the experience more emotional. “Drake passed while we were there,” Reeves reveals. “And that was so surreal because in my mind, Drake is strapping Drake! Drake who would walk through the halls and tell his stories … He was the most incredible man. And that we were there when he passed away felt like, ‘God put us back there so we could be there for those really special moments and memories that we need to cherish, to share with our fans and share with our fellow actors and castmates.’ It was just so special, and you can’t take it for granted.”
The actor’s connection to daytime runs especially deep because not only has he appeared on DAYS (as Jake back in 1988), Young and Restless (as Ryan McNeil from 1991-2001), but he met his wife on the set of DAYS. “I am so deeply rooted in this medium,” he nods. “My first acting gig was on Days of Our Lives, I met my wife, I got on Y&R, we had our kids while we were on these shows. These shows have been such a huge part of our lives and I am fortunate enough to have been a part of three shows that are left and all of these people that are affiliated with these shows, fans included, are my family. They’ve seen our family grow, they’ve seen our life as we’ve lived it, and everybody has been so supportive, as a family would be. We are so blessed and fortunate to have been a part of a medium that has made such an impact on the world. I was just talking to someone the other day who said, ‘I scheduled my life around all the shows you’ve been on!’ It’s like my wife and me have grown up with these viewers. We were the kids and now we’re the grandparents! It’s just such an honor and such a privilege.”
To the fans, Reeves says, “Obviously, our fans are really the ones to make it possible for us to bring General Hospital to life and to bring these characters to life and to bring these stories to them daily. They are really some of the most loyal fans on the planet and over the years, especially when we were out on the road with Port Chuck [the band he formed with Bradford Anderson, Spinelli, Brandon Barash, ex-Johnny, and Steve Burton, Jason], we got to meet so many of our fans face to face and got to know them and I can’t thank them all enough for receiving me with open arms. For them to respond so positively to me coming back was something that you can’t buy and you cannot take for granted.”
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