'General Hospital' Star Cameron Mathison Talks New Look for Reprised Role on Daytime Soap (Exclusive)

Hallmark star and celebrity host Cameron Mathison recently announced his new role on General Hospital after he took to Instagram to share a very different look with fans. The actor posed in front of the General Hospital sign ahead of his Aug. 16 debut as Drew Cain, but it was his beard that onlookers couldn't seem to look past. During an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com, Mathison admitted while fans had their assumptions on who they thought he would be starring as, in the daytime soap, the role even took him by surprise, calling it a bit of a "curveball."

"Frank Valentini, who is just one of the most awesome people on the planet — EP (executive producer) over there — so multi-level involved, it's incredible, he actually gave me a curveball. I was told it was a different character for the first month and a half that I had signed the contract," Mathison explained, adding how fans will be "very happy" with his role as Cain. As for his bearded style, Mathison said that due to some "flashbacks" in one of his scenes, he went to set in a full beard and walked away with it completely shaved, something he had never experienced before.

"I show up with this pretty, fairly long beard for me — about a five-week-old beard — and then while I was shooting that, I shot one day [...] in that day of shooting, I had to then shave and shoot some flashbacks which was cool. So in the same episode, I've got this [long beard] I've never done anything like that, and now during the General Hospital break, I'm having to grow the beard in again. So clever."

While he anticipates his first episode on the award-winning soap opera, viewers just got to celebrate his on-screen reunion with former Murder, She Baked co-star, Alison Sweeney as the two starred in the new Hallmark Movies & Mysteries movie Sweet Revenge: A Hannah Swensen Mystery together. Both Sweeney and Mathison spoke with PopCulture and gushed over being back on set together, saying it's as if no time had passed at all. "Oh my gosh, it was so much fun," Sweeney gushed.

"I had one hundred percent confidence that it would be as if no time had passed," she added, noting how "great" it was being side-by-side with Mathison again as they reprised their roles as Hannah Swensen and Mike. The film is set to re-air during several upcoming dates and can be found here.