General Hospital’s Dante, Dominic Zamprogna, on Daytime Emmy Nod: ‘You’ve Got to Show Why You Should Be in Lead’ (EXCL)
For the second time, Dominic Zamprogna has scored a nomination at the Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor for his portrayal of Dante Falconeri on General Hospital. The actor, who also has three nominations under his belt in the Supporting Actor category, grins, “I kind of set it as a personal goal to be in the ring again and here I am!”
Fifth Element
The actor learned he’d made the nominee list while driving home from picking up his visiting sister at the airport when his phone started blowing up. “I was pleasantly surprised,” he says. “I thought I had a decent shot based on the material, but everyone always thinks they’ve got a decent shot at being nominated. It felt really good! I was saying to someone else recently that there’s less shows [in daytime], but there isn’t less talent, so to make it felt really, really good.”
Zamprogna had a wealth of dramatic and emotional material to choose from, given that Dante’s fiancée, Sam McCall (Kelly Monaco), died tragically during the period of eligibility for submission reels. “I didn’t want it all being down, crying, sad stuff,” he says of the scenes he submitted. “When I watch someone’s reel, I like seeing a range. I mean, when you’re in Lead, you’ve got to show why you should be in Lead.” After tinkering with the reel to make it shorter (“Who the hell wants to sit through 15 minutes of anything?”), what he settled on was “the engagement, which showed some lighter stuff, and then the bedside [stuff with Dante at Sam’s bedside after she passed], some stuff with Sonny in the hospital and with Alexis giving the ring back, and then the eulogy at the end.”
The selections were made in consultation with some very important critics: his wife and three daughters. “I had it pretty well mapped out, but then I said to my girls, ‘You guys all need to watch all these scenes and tell me which ones should go on my tape.’ And so they all made their list and then I compiled the list based on that.”
Winning would help Zamprogna save face on the home front. “The hardest thing about having kids now is that they’re old enough to know how many times you’ve been nominated and to ask why you haven’t won already!” he teases. “So I kind of want to win just so I can say, ‘Hey, now everyone gets to shut the bleep up!’ ”
With the ceremony fast approaching on Friday, October 17, he’s still not sure who his date for the evening will be. “It’s looking like I might take my oldest,” Anbilliene, whose 15th birthday is two days after the ceremony.” She’s kind of dying to go and my wife [Linda] is like, ‘It’s fine with me if she really wants to! So, I’m kind of letting them battle it out and they’re going to tell me who I’m taking.”
While the actor is delighted that so many of his colleagues were also nominated, he feels there was one omitted co-star who should have made the cut. “I’m super-happy for Nancy [Lee Grahn, Alexis] and Kate [Mansi, Kristina] and Laura [Wright, Carly] and stuff, but honestly, I think Steve Burton [Jason] should have been nominated. I thought he did great work. The stuff he did by Sam’s bedside was pretty phenomenal and his eulogy was great, so I was surprised Steve didn’t get a nod.” Of being the only GH actor in his category, he jokes of his thrice-winning on-screen father, “At least Maurice [Benard, Sonny] isn’t in there to ruin it for me!”
The Graduate
For Zamprogna, graduating from Supporting to Lead nominations means a great deal. “I’ve always felt that if you’re going to do something, you should try to be the best at it,” he notes. “I’ve been doing this a long time — I’ve been acting since I was 12 years old and I’ve been working consistently for a long time, which is tough to do. Once you’ve been doing that, you’re like, ‘Okay, what’s next?’ You constantly push yourself to be better and more real and more authentic and organic, which is hard to do sometimes, especially in our medium, with the pace we go at. But life hands you so many things that you can use when you get older. So it’s not like it gets easier, but you end up bringing in more life experience and who you are to the job on the daily. Even the simplest scenes and the most commonplace moments, you’re bringing in stuff. But in the heavier stuff, you’re really using your life experience.
“I don’t know, it just seemed like the next progression,” he continues. “When I came back to the show [in 2020, after a two-year absence] and Frank [Valentini, executive producer] was like, ‘I want you to go in for Lead,’ and I did it and I got the nomination, I was like, ‘Oh, cool!’ If I didn’t get the nomination that year, I don’t know that I would have had the [guts] to submit on my own or assume, ‘I’m a lead actor,’ you know? But when someone told me to do it, I kind of got used to the idea! It’s like, ‘Okay, that’s what I am now, and I don’t want to go back to Supporting. While I’m on this show, I want to be a lead actor.’ ”
While his day-to-day focus is on his work, “and it’s not like you’re doing scenes to try to get nominations,” the actor does try to make a mental note of scenes he feels went particularly well. “I did some scenes yesterday where, after they were done, I said, ‘Oh, those went in a completely different direction than I anticipated and some interesting things just happened.’ And I’ll tick in my head, like, ‘Oh, if I were to submit next year for the Emmys, I’d think about using that one.’ ”
Scenes like that — that feel organic and go in a direction he wasn’t anticipating — are the ones that feel most authentic to Zamprogna. “When you’re younger, you’re trying to map everything out so much,” he muses. “Now, I’m kind of okay with seeing how certain things transpire on their own because it’s exhausting trying to control it. I have three daughters — I’m exhausted from trying to control three daughters! They’re teaching me on the daily that you’ve just got to surrender, and that’s kind of what I’m trying to do in my work: really surrender to the moments and the emotions and what you’re getting from your fellow actors and being true and honest. And when you feel like you’re doing good work, of course, you’d like it to be recognized.”
The downside of being in the Lead category is that it tends to come with a longer wait for the category to be called during the ceremony. “I don’t like sitting around,” he groans. I’m terrible at it! It’s very hard for me to just kind of be in the moment when I’m sitting around waiting and watching, but I’m getting better at it — kind of [laughs]. But with everything going on in the world right now, any chance we have to be in a room full of support and love and friendly faces, we should enjoy it the best we can, right?”
In addition to whether his wife or daughter will be his plus-one, the jury is still out as to whether he’ll have a prepared speech in his pocket just in case his name is called. “A couple of months ago, just after I found out I was nominated, I was on a hike with my dog and I kind of had a few thoughts. I was like, ‘What if you win? What would you say?’ And I jotted down a couple of notes, just wanting to make sure that there were a few things I hit. I haven’t decided yet [if he’ll compose a more formal thank-you speech]. I don’t think I’m going to have a notepad or anything! Just thank the people that are the reason you’re there and get off the stage. It’s a long night — no one wants to hear me talk!”
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