RICKY MIDDLESWORTH/ABC
General Hospital fans experienced a tearjerker for the ages last week when Sam McCall unexpectedly died after donating part of her liver to an ailing Lulu Spencer. Kelly Monaco’s final scenes as Sam after a 21-year run were opposite Dominic Zamprogna (Dante), her leading man for the last several years, as he poured his heart out at her dead character’s bedside.
Saying Good-Bye
“My monologues were her last scenes, so we finished those scenes and I basically said good-bye to Kelly then and there,” shares Zamprogna, who adds that in her final weeks of filming, “She was amazing. Amazing, amazing, amazing.”
The actor, who joined GH in 2009, had worked casually alongside Monaco for years, but they developed a closer bond once their characters were paired romantically in 2021. “You become fast friends with people that you work with like that,” he observes. “You’re in the trenches of 14, 15-hour days and shooting nights and everyone in the crew becomes like family, your castmates become like family — you argue and love each other like family do, and the three-and-a-half years that we were together on the show were a big, important time of my life and in my character’s life. And I got to know Kelly in a way that I’d never known her before. And she’s a remarkable person. She’s tough as nails and admirable in so many ways, and it’s been cool to become a friend of hers. And that won’t end. It’s just that there is still an ending because you’re not working with someone anymore.”
Over the course of creating their characters’ romance, Zamprogna says that he learned that Monaco “is softer than her tough Philly exterior, and I never knew that side of her before working with her. I’ve been with her in very emotional states myself and we became very able to tell each other very personal things and kind of talk each other through moments that I never would have anticipated that I would have with her because she gives off such a ‘tough girl’ vibe and she’s extremely cool and confident. But nobody is always cool and confident and tough, and that is what really endeared me to her. I just loved getting to know her, understanding who she really was, because she’s deep and complex.”
Zamprogna himself left GH for several years — he joined the show in 2009, exited in 2017 and made a full-time return in 2020 — and says he learned some valuable lessons from his own Port Charles exit that he wanted to impart to Monaco in their final weeks of working together. “We’re kind of living a bit of a fake reality on the show,” Zamprogna says. “There are not a lot of shows that are on the air as long as GH. There are not a lot of actors who can say they’ve been on a show for one year, let alone 21 years. I think sometimes you don’t want to know what life will be like without it because you’re so used to something. But I’ve found the greatest things in my life have come when it feels like a door is closing. And I was really trying to emphasize that to her.”
While their working relationship at GH has come to an end, Zamprogna and Monaco’s friendship continues. “I still check in on her every week,” he says. Nor does he rule out the possibility that they’ll work together again one day in the anything-goes world of daytime. “It’s a soap,” the actor proclaims. “Who the heck knows what’s gonna happen?”
ABC
The Mourning After: Zamprogna and Monaco in their final GH scenes.
