General Hospital’s Rory Gibson On Fans Embracing Him As Michael: ‘I Really Felt The Love’ (EXCL)
Soap fans can be notoriously slow to warm up to actors entering the show as recasts for an established character. But when Rory Gibson assumed the role of Michael Corinthos on General Hospital in May, just a few short months after Chad Duell aired for the final time after opting to leave the show following a nearly 15-year run, the response from the audience was overwhelmingly positive.
Embraceable You
Gibson tells Soap Opera Digest that he was braced for an uphill battle in winning over fans. “I’ve been a recast before, so I know that it can come with a little bit of resistance,” notes the star, who got his soap start playing Noah Newman on Young and Restless from 2021-23; since being introduced upon his birth in 1997, the character had been played by well over a dozen actors. “Especially,” he points out, “if the person that you are jumping in for has been there for a while and I know that people really love Chad.”
As a result, the actor was braced for negative feedback. “I was kind of anticipating a little bit of resistance and a little bit of heat and maybe people not warming up to me super-quick,” he explains, “so I kind of made the intention of [avoiding social media]. I don’t have Twitter [now known as X]; I do have Instagram, but I was like, ‘Just try to avoid things. Just don’t even look at it because it’s going to get a little intense for a little bit.’ ”
Before long, though, people in his life gave him the all clear to check out what fans were saying. Reports Gibson, “I have a couple of friends who are actually big GH fans who work in publicity and they are very involved in Twitter and stuff. One of my best friends, Jenna, has kind of been my sounding board through [me joining the show] because she knows everything there is to know about GH. She was like, ‘You should really just hop on and see what people are saying.’ I was like, ‘No, no, no.’ She was like, ‘No, seriously,’ because she knew that I was… not worried about it, but just anticipating some, you know, negativity or some heat coming my way, I suppose.”
What he found when he dipped his toes into the online waters was heartening, to say the least. “Everyone has been unbelievably, overwhelmingly kind,” Gibson marvels. “It was so cool to see. It was just so refreshing and nice and I really felt the love. I felt very welcomed, and I was very appreciative of it.”
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