GH Exclusive: Dominic Zamprogna Breaks Down Dante’s Angry Eruption At Gio
Like Father, Like Son: Giovanni Mazza (Gio, l.) and Dominic Zamprogna (Dante) on the GH set.
After his teenage son, Rocco, wound up hospitalized due to alcohol poisoning on General Hospital, Dante Falconeri unleashed his anger on Gio Palmieri , holding the young man responsible for Rocco’s condition. The incident has driven a wedge between the fellow Bensonhurst transplants, whose families have long been intertwined. Of course, fans know what makes the rift an even bigger deal than either guy realizes: They are actually father and son, as Gio is the baby boy Brook Lynn gave away 22 years ago after secretly giving birth to Dante’s child. Soap Opera Digest checked in with Dominic Zamprogna, Dante’s portrayer, for his take on his character’s furious outburst.
Mad About You
Zamprogna suspected that Dante lashing out at Gio would evoke a big reaction from fans even before he taped the scenes. “When I got the material, I was like, ‘Wow, this is really heavy,’ ” he recalls. “They actually came to me before and even said, ‘There’s some stuff coming up and it’s gonna be pretty harsh toward Gio.’ And when I read it, I was like, ‘Wow. Yeah, it really is.’ It’s not really fun to play that kind of stuff,” he adds. “It’s sort of dysfunctional, you know? However, I tried to find the truth in it.”
For Zamprogna, that meant understanding what was at the core of Dante’s tirade. “In the beginning of it, when Dante doesn’t know if Rocco’s going to make it, that’s self-explanatory,” he begins. “You’re just going to sling wherever you sling if you’re worried your child is going to survive something! And the other thing is the mental state he was in on the heels of losing Sam [his fiancée, who was murdered last year] and Lulu [his ex-wife and Rocco’s mother] waking up and, having a part of Sam in her [as she received a liver transplant from Sam before she passed away]… His whole life has gotten turned upside down, and in that moment with Gio, it all just becomes too much for him. We all do work on ourselves and none of us ever want to admit that we would ever lose our s–t, but in real life, sometimes we do. There’s a fork in the road, mentally, when you’re in a terrible place or you’ve allowed your emotions to get the better of you, and when you’re in that frame of mind, you don’t always have the ability to take the right action.”
So, in the heat of the moment, Dante zeroed in on Gio as a target of his out-of-control emotions. Points out Zamprogna, “By that point, you’re not self-regulating; you’re already into the red zone. We all like to think that we have emotional intelligence in the worst moments of our lives, but I don’t know that we do. That’s the position I tried to put myself in [to play the scenes], but it was tough. And I agree with people looking at it who say it was harsh and hard to listen to and watch — and Dante going off on Lois [when she jumped to Gio’s defense], that was pretty intense, too! But as an actor, you have to find ways to make it as real as possible, and if it’s on the page, you want to deliver it.”
While this was far from Dante’s proudest moment, Zamprogna hopes fans could see that Dante was operating from a place of fear and emotional overwhelm. “I hope that came through, because that’s what you try and layer it with, to make it so that it’s not just surface-level [rage].”
Having to go off on Gio with such ferocity made an off-camera impact on the actor, he admits. “No one wants to go to those places,” he says. “That’s a pretty intense place to be and I actually had a bit of a tough weekend, kind of decompressing after that week. It’s not a nice place to have to go to, and it’s hard to come back from. I do a lot of work on meditation and self-regulation because we [he and wife Linda] are parents and we’re teaching our kids these things. So, when you get scenes like that and you’ve been doing work on that kind of stuff, it almost makes it harder to go there, because in your real life, you’re working on not going there!”
Present Tense
On the episode that aired on May 15, Rocco took responsibility for his own actions and urged his dad to forgive Gio. Dante didn’t entirely seem persuaded, which Zamprogna chalks up to Gio’s failure to call Dante immediately after discovering that Rocco had been drinking. “The one thing that got me really able to go where I needed to go in those initial scenes is that line where Dante says, ‘You know how many calls I have to take about parents who’ve lost kids this exact same way?’ ” he recounts. “That really hit home with me as a parent, and that made it very real for me as the actor playing the role. And I think that is sticking with Dante, the idea that, ‘Why didn’t he call me?’
“Of course,” the actor continues, “everyone’s gonna say, ‘He’s 22, and no one knew [how dire] the situation was in that moment!’ And it’s true — I can remember in my younger and wilder days, you’d see people in all sorts of situations and you didn’t automatically think the worst or that you should call an ambulance or a parent. So I get it. I think Gio was doing his best, and I think people [in the audience] are having a hard time with how hard Dante’s come down on this kid who clearly did his best. I think that is something that maybe Dante will come around to realizing, that there was nothing evil about what this kid did; he did what he thought was right at the time. I definitely think that hearing Rocco say all those things to him is going to have an effect on him — but how much, I don’t know.”
However long the tension between Gio and Dante continues, Zamprogna appreciates how their conflict raises the stakes should the secret that they are father and son come to light. Nods Zamprogna, “It’s definitely going to make it that much more challenging to have a relationship when it does all come crashing down.”
No I Won’t Back Down: Dante is holding on to his anger toward Gio.
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.