General Hospital: Chad Duell Reveals He Didn’t Expect Michael to Be Recast
When Chad Duell decided to leave General Hospital in 2024 after a nearly 15-year run as Michael Corinthos, he made it clear that he was open to reclaiming the role following his break from the show — and admitted in a new interview that he was surprised when the soap instead decided to recast with Michael’s current portrayer, Rory Gibson.
Chad Duell Thought He Would Come Back to GH
“Things changed,” Duell said in a video interview with Michael Fairman on August 19, where he opened up about his departure from GH. After stepping away, he noted, “They kind of changed up the character a little bit. I didn’t know — I was like, ‘I’m taking some time away, we’ll see what happens.’ But then, yeah, obviously they decided to go a different direction with him when I was gone.”
That different direction was an entirely new actor — and Duell admitted, “I didn’t think they were going to bring somebody back in my place. But you know, it’s the business. You never know what can happen.”
Duell described his choice to leave GH as “taking a step back and refueling the tank” after a tumultuous period of change in his personal life. At the time, he wanted to take a break from the entertainment industry to focus on grieving the death of his father, Richard, and to spend quality time with his infant son, Dawson, who was born in 2023.
The actor explained that he shared his plans with GH Executive Producer Frank Valentini before the news became public so that the soap could write a proper exit for his alter ego. “I wanted to give them notice,” Duell said. “I didn’t want to throw it on him last minute. I didn’t want to be like, ‘Hey, see ya!’ I wanted to let them have time, like three months or so [to] flesh out a storyline to get me to step away for a bit.”
The resulting storyline saw Michael badly burned in an explosion and shipped off to a special clinic overseas to recover from his injuries early in 2025. “They didn’t burn my face because I told [Valentini] I’m willing to come back,” Duell related. “It was just a little bit of a break. So I assumed that if they would have burned my face, they could have brought somebody back looking different than me… if that’s what their plan was.”
In November 2024, after Duell announced his imminent exit from the soap, Valentini posted on X (formerly Twitter): “There are no plans to recast his role at this time, but you never know in daytime.”
Duell’s final episode aired in January 2025, and in May, General Hospital confirmed that former The Young and the Restless star Rory Gibson had been hired to assume the role of Michael.
“I actually still do miss the people, miss the energy there,” Duell said of his old stomping grounds. But he also added that though his GH role had been recast, he would be open to joining the cast of another soap. “I’m ready to sink my teeth back into everything,” he declared. “I know people over at Bold and the Beautiful, Young and the Restless.”
Duell also shared that he’s made that interest known to the other daytime dramas. “I mean, I’ve talked to them,” he said. “They know that if they’re interested, I would love to come in for a screen test or something, and they can see what I’m doing.”
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