General Hospital’s Dominic Zamprogna On Dante’s Reunion With Nathan, Reteaming with Ryan Paevey (Excl)
Longtime fans of General Hospital will remember what a big part of Dante Falconeri’s (Dominic Zamprogna) life Nathan West (Ryan Paevey) was during the character’s original run on the show, which lasted from 2013-18. The two detectives were paired together as partners at the PCPD, and their professional and personal lives overlapped quite a bit, as well, when Nathan fell in love with Maxie Jones (Kirsten Storms), the best friend of Dante’s then-wife, Lulu Spencer (then Emme Rylan, now Alexa Havins). Indeed, when Nathan and Maxie tied the knot, it was Dante who served at his best man at the wedding — and when Nathan appeared to die in the line of duty, Dante’s devastation and grief were heart-wrenching. Now, seven years later, the men have been granted a classic soap opera miracle: Nathan is back from the dead, and back in business on the police force after Acting Commissioner Falconeri reinstated him on the November 11 episode. Soap Opera Digest checked in with Dominic Zamprogna about his on- and off-camera reunion with co-star pal Ryan Paevey.
An Officer and a Gentleman
According to Zamprogna, having Paevey back in the mix at the GH studio “has been great! It kind of feels like he never left, you know? Which is common — I feel like a lot of the time when people come back to the show, it always feels like, ‘Wait, you’ve been gone for how long?!'”
Zamprogna appreciates that he was able to pick up where he left off with Paevey. “He’s the same dude; he’s exactly the same guy,” the actor says. “And I was actually thinking to myself last night, when I got home from work, ‘You know, it’s really nice having Ryan back.’ He’s a good human and he doesn’t take what we do too seriously, and he’s also a really good conversationalist in the hallways when we’re just killing time or bumping into each other.”
The two actors kept in touch during Paevey’s years away from the show, some of which overlapped with Zamprogna’s own GH break from 2018-20. “We were pretty tight when he left,” Zamprogna explains, “and we kept in touch over the years. You lose touch with a lot of people when you’re not working together anymore, but he and I always kind of texted each other randomly at times. But it’s been really nice to have him back. It’s always nice to have people with good energy in the building! It’s good for morale, and our characters have so much history. It just feels like it’s good for the show.”
Seeing A Ghost
Of course, when Zamprogna shared his first scenes with Paevey since his return, he had to work out a very soap opera-specific acting challenge: reacting to the sight of someone you had every reason to believe was dead, open casket funeral and all! Chuckles Zamprogna, “You go onto a set, and it’s like, ‘There’s Britt [Kelly Thiebaud, who also returned to the dead] and there’s Nathan,’ and I say to her, ‘So, how are you alive?’ ‘Oh, I faked my own death.’ ‘Oh, okay, cool. And how are you alive?’ And [Paevey] is like, ‘I have no idea!’ Sometimes, it’s a mystery to even the actors, you know? They haven’t been told certain things because the writers don’t want everybody to know everything because it’s hard enough to keep things under wraps as it is [laughs]. In Ryan’s case, it’s kind of interesting what they’ve done, because Nathan is like, ‘I’m back, but I have no memory [of all the years I was supposedly dead].’ And he can play that because he legitimately doesn’t know very much of the story!
“But as an actor on the other side of that, it’s tough!” Zamprogna continues. “Lisa [LoCicero, Olivia] and I always joke that Maurice [Benard, Sonny] is the king of these things because he’s been on the show for more than 35 years, and I don’t know how any people close to Sonny have died and come back, or how many awful things have happened to Sonny where he constantly has to be acting like it’s never happened before! I have a hard enough time with it as it is — like, when I knew when Ryan was coming back, I was like, ‘Damn, I’m happy he’s back, but how the hell am I gonna play this?!'”
The men’s first scenes together took place in October in Anna’s (Finola Hughes) office, and Zamprogna shrugs, “When I saw him, I just brought in what naturally came, which was, ‘Oh, I’m happy to see Ryan again! I’m happy my buddy’s back on the show!’ So in the scenes, I just gave him a hug and a high-five and I was like, ‘Yeah, man!’ Like, ‘My boy’s back!’ Just like you would do it if you hadn’t seen your best friend in five years or whatever it was.”
Three’s A Crowd?
When Nathan died — er, “died” — Dante was assigned a new partner: Chase (Josh Swickard). He and Dante got off to a rough start, as Dante was still mourning the loss of Nathan and didn’t extend the warmest of welcomes to the new guy sitting at Nathan’s old desk. But in time, Dante and Chase became tight pals, too. With Nathan back in the mix, both in Port Charles and the police station more specifically, might the show be setting up a bromantic love triangle? Winks Zamprogna, “Well, you’ve got three detectives and only two desks! I mean, I guess there is a third desk [on the police station set], but it’s on the other side of the room and no one really ever sits there. Actually, it would be pretty funny if someone had to go sit at that desk, kind of like wearing the dunce’s cap in the corner over at the other desk! And it would be funny to see Chase and Nathan kind of competing for the desk and for the friendship and the partnership with Dante.”
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.