Many General Hospital fans hit panic mode when Steve Burton (Jason Morgan) recently shared an Instagram post in which he bid farewell to his band, Port Chuck -- which some confused with the show's fictional town of Port Charles. Chaos ensued, so the actor has gone public with an explanation to soothe fans' frazzled nerves.
During a Facebook Live chat with his GH costar Bradford Anderson (Damian Spinelli), Burton clarifies what he meant in the Instagram post. "It's a great picture in my Port Chuck hoodie. Port Chuck was one of the greatest times of my life, and I thanked [band members] Bradford, Scott [Reeves, ex-Steve Webber], and Brandon [Barash, ex-Johnny Zacchara]. And then people misconstrued that I was leaving the show because I wanted to thank Port Chuck for some of the best times of my life."
He continues, "So, Port Chuck and Port Charles, not the same thing, technically. Port Chuck's the band, and Port Charles is the city in which I'm staying for a long time, I hope. So, there you go. That might have been the confusion."
Some might say that there's an obvious difference between Port Chuck the band and Port Charles the city, but, in fact, the band derived its name from Anthony Geary (ex-Luke Spencer), who nicknamed the ABC soap's fictional city "Port Chuck" and often used that term instead of Port Charles.
Burton began playing the role of GH's Jason in 1991 and went on to win a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in 1998 for his work on the ABC soap opera. He left GH in 2012 and subsequently joined The Young and the Restless as Dylan McAvoy, winning another Daytime Emmy Award in 2017 for his work on the CBS series. At the end of 2016, Burton left Y&R and rejoined GH in the role of Jason, which had been taken over for a brief time by Billy Miller [ex-Billy Abbott, Y&R; ex-Richie Novak, All My Children] before it was revealed that Miller's version of the character was actually Jason's surprise twin brother, Drew Cain.
Are you relieved to hear that Steve Burton doesn't have plans to leave GH? What storylines would you like to see for Jason in the months ahead? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.