Nearly six years since being let go from “The Young and the Restless” as Cane Ashby, actor Daniel Goddard is returning to daytime to play Professor Henry Dalton on “General Hospital,” a character first referenced earlier this week during a conversation between Josslyn Jacks (Eden McCoy) and her WSB handler, Vaughn (Bryce Durfee). Goddard first airs on Tuesday, April 15.
In an interview with TV Insider, Goddard spoke about his return to the genre, the character he originally auditioned for before landing the recurring role on the ABC soap opera, and reuniting with some of his former colleagues at “The Young and the Restless.”
Taping his first episodes in mid-March, Goddard told the outlet that his character works at Port Charles University, saying, “He teaches environmental physics, and it seems there are some things in his past that he’s done that have left him in a position of some form of investigation.” He added, “And from there, it’s an absolute mystery to me.”
It’s a mystery because Goddard indicated to the show’s executive producer, Frank Valentini, how he preferred not knowing much else about his character even if the other actors did.
“I know that the characters that I’ve had scenes with know something about him,” teased Goddard. “I don’t want to know what it is because I don’t want to play it, that I know. I’d rather have the character be sort of a clean slate to me.”
“At ‘[The] Young and the Restless,’ I always used to read the whole script because other characters will talk about you, and you’ll get to know more about you than you know about yourself,” Goddard continued. “At ‘General Hospital,’ you only get your pages, and I thought, ‘Woody Allen would do that, where he doesn’t want everybody [sic] know what’s going on or what the twists and turns are.’ And I thought, ‘This is going to be cool.’ So, I’m allowing myself to go on the journey of who Dalton is from the audience’s perspective and from my perspective of what is the growth and evolution of him. I will allow it to unfold as the bits and pieces present themselves to me.”
As for working with McCoy, whose character is going to be attending one of his classes as part of an undercover mission for the WSB, Goddard says, “I think she’s fantastic. With Josslyn, it’s professor and student, and a great push and pull there.”
As for how he landed the part, Goddard notes he was actually first called in for an audition for the role of Jack Brennan, a character that was being recast at the time following the exit of Charles Mesure.
“It’s the first audition I’ve had in many years, and it was a bizarre experience for me,” the actor shared. “You feel like, in a way, you’re going back to ground zero, back to the beginning of it all, even though you’ve been on a different soap opera for, like, 15 years. It was humbling, but it was more of an awakening, and in that moment, I felt extraordinarily vulnerable.”
Although the role eventually went to Chris L. McKenna, interestingly, another actor who had auditioned was Daniel Cosgrove, who is now playing the recurring role of Ezra Boyle.
“I was standing out in the hallway, and there were four or five other guys there. One of them was Daniel Cosgrove, and I was like, ‘Oh, wow. There’s a bunch of people here and there’s competition,’ so instantly I become fearful of the fact that I didn’t want to fail,” Goddard detailed. “So, I kind of felt this incredible pressure, and I walked in the room, and I saw Laura [Wright, Carly Spencer] and Frank, and the writers, and Mark [Teschner, casting director] and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is real. This is really happening.’”
While he didn’t land the gig as Jack Brennan, the show apparently liked what they saw in Goddard and reached out to his former manager, Michael Bruno, who shared that the show had a new character they were looking to cast and they thought the actor fit the part.
“I was just gobsmacked by it,” he revealed to TV Insider, referring to receiving a callback “It wasn’t a recast. It was a new character, and I was so blown away. I really felt like the timing was right, and I felt like it was meant to be. I can’t begin to express my gratitude to Frank and everyone at ‘General Hospital’ and to Michael Bruno for really believing in me and being there.”
Although he has yet to air, thus far, Goddard is pleased with the chance to take on a new role on a new show after previously appearing on “The Young and the Restless” for more than 12 years, exiting in 2019.
“It’s been an extraordinary, wonderful experience so far,” he enthuses. “I just got new scripts, and I have four episodes coming up in one week, which I’m so excited about. It makes me feel wanted in the sense that everything that I’ve gone through in this process up until now is meant to be. I couldn’t be more grateful to be back in what I think is probably the most beloved genre in all of entertainment.”
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Goddard posted a video of his exiting the Prospect Studios building where “General Hospital” tapes in Hollywood, CA. In it, he tells the security guard to “have a lovely day” as he walks out the studio doors where the iconic General Hospital sign appears while indicating a secret is about to be revealed, referring to his casting.
He captioned the post, “1,973 days later,” referencing the time since he last appeared as Cane Ashby on “The Young and the Restless” and his joining “General Hospital” as Henry Dalton.
Watch the video below.
For more on what Goddard has to say about his joining the daytime drama series, as well as working again with his former colleagues at “The Young and the Restless,” including Genie Francis (Laura Collins; Genevieve Atkinson on ‘The Young and the Restless”) and Steve Burton (Jason Morgan; Dylan McAvoy on “The Young and the Restless”), among others, as well as working with people like Finola Hughes (Anna Devane), read the rest of his TV Insider interview here.
