Perhaps better than most, Maurice Benard knows what a cesspool of fakery the Internet can be. So he recently had to take to Facebook to warn his followers about yet another account pretending that it was him. “They are many imposters,” he began — and even typed, you could just hear the words being sighed. “They get on my freaking nerves.”
Ours, too. At least there is one sure way to tell whether a post is from the Emmy-winning General Hospital legend or someone posing as him. “Anybody who starts a sentence ‘Hello, my wonderful fan’ is not me.”
With that, Sonny’s portrayer encouraged his admirers to “please get the word out” about the faux Benard. In the meantime, “I am talking to people and figuring out what’s going on. Love you guys.”
Then, in the comments, things got really weird. When one General Hospital viewer took the time out from her day to say, “Please retire… the Sonny Corinthos legacy is ruined, anyway,” Benard’s fans reacted as most anyone would with variations of “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
But as for Benard, he replied, “Be careful what you wish for.”
Yikes. Could the day be drawing near that the MVP leaves Port Charles? We know that he has been contemplating it — as far back as the spring of 2022. During an episode of his vlog State of Mind, he admitted, “Acting… I don’t know when, but soon enough, I’ll be done with. Sorry. I hate to say that, but it’s the truth.”
The reason? “Acting isn’t what it was when I was young,” he said. “Sometimes it’s difficult, and it hits me in places… that I don’t like, like ugh.”
Benard even had an inkling of what he would like to do if he retired. “If I ever left, I want to bring State of Mind [to] a place where I can make a good enough living to just do this,” he shared at the time. “There’s less pressure here for me, and I can still work with the mental health.”
Can you even imagine General Hospital without Sonny? He’s been playing the part since 1993, following his big break as All My Children’s Nico Kelly. Over the years, the character has become the sun around which the rest of the soap revolves. Heck, Sonny has more children than the hospital has doctors!
