Rick Hearst: Brotherly Love?
After all the years it took Ric to make nice with big brother Sonny, Ric’s pushing Sonny toward a nervous breakdown has shocked GENERAL HOSPITAL viewers. What happened to the brotherly bond they’d been forming?
“Well, I think it’s still there,” says Rick Hearst (Ric). “As it’s been explained to me, [it’s] to get Sonny help. For so many years, Sonny has gone through these episodes and never gotten help for it.”
Hearst blames Jason, in part, for enabling the mobster. “Sonny’s a proud man,” Hearst points out. “He’s not somebody who is going to come forth and say, ‘I need help.’ Weakness, in his business, is death, as he’s said millions of times. Ric understands that, but he also won’t shelter Sonny. He doesn’t want his brother to have to live with this, because they are blood. [However,] like an alcoholic, most people have to bottom out with an addiction before they seek help. Ric feels like Sonny has never actually bottomed out enough to want to go get help.”
Once Ric facilitates that bottoming out, he hopes to lead Sonny toward the path to recovery. “That is something very important to Ric, because it’s a unity of family that he has not had. Obviously, he is a man who is desperate for validation,” notes Hearst. “It could be an interesting dynamic. I’m hopeful that there will be a moment where Ric gets to see more of Sonny than Sonny has ever let anybody see, and that becomes a bond.”
Hearst has enjoyed his scenes with
Maurice Benard (Sonny), particularly when Sonny confronted Ric about gaslighting him. “When he was raging, I came in soft,” recounts Hearst. “That’s the dynamic that Maurice and I have. We know how to come at each other in a way that will allow the other to change gears, which is very much like the relationship between Sonny and Ric.”
“Nobody knows anything about Ric’s plan, and that’s the way that he would like to keep it. But people, of course, are going to start to find out,” hints Hearst, anticipating that when Sonny’s family and friends do, it will not be pretty. “They won’t understand.”
As for the audience, Hearst hopes they will understand that Ric means well. “I can’t split hairs with my performance,” insists the actor. “I can’t play it all sweet and nice, like, ‘Oh, poor Sonny.’ I want to help him. It’s got to come from a place of being cruel to be kind. Ric has to be strong through this for Sonny. That’s the way that I look at it.”
Yet, Hearst realizes that his alter ego will likely be perceived as a rotten scoundrel. “It will absolutely come off like that,” asserts Hearst, admitting that what Rick is doing “is twisted. It’s f—-d up! I just hope, on the other side of it, that I have a job in three months. That will be nice.”
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