‘General Hospital’ Bringing Back Zander Smith Actor Chad Brannon

Chad Brannon is returning to General Hospital for the first time in over a decade in March. It is not clear how what role he will play, as his character Alexander “Zander” Smith, died in 2004. Brannon was last seen in Port Charles in a December 2009 episode, playing a different character only known as Aaron for one episode.

Brannon, 41, is set to start filming new General Hospital episodes on Friday, Entertainment Weekly reports. His first episodes will air in March. Zaner is the biological father of Cameron Webber, played by William Lipton. Cameron’s stepfather is Franco Baldwin, the part first played by James Franco and now played by Roger Howarth. Cameron’s mother is Elizabeth Webber (Rebeca Herbst).

Zander was first introduced in 2000, with Marc Brett in the role. Brannon was cast as the character and played him until he was shot and killed in 2004. Zander took his own life after a SWAT team surrounded him and Emily Quartermaine (Natalia Livingstone), whom he was holding hostage, notes TVLine. Brannon won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actor in a Draa Series in 2004 and was also nominated for the role in 2003.

Aside from General Hospital, Brannon’s credits included guest roles on JAG, Cold Case, Deadwood, Friday Night Lights, CSI, and Bosch. He recently appeared in the movie Killer in Suburbia with fellow soap opera alums John-Paul Lavoisier, Morgan Obenreder, and Chris McKenna. Brannon voiced characters in American Dad! and The Cleveland Show as well.

General Hospital is the longest-running soap opera in American history, premiering on ABC in April 1963. The show holds the record for most Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series with 13 trophies. The show’s production was put on hold for four months last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, and new episodes were not filmed until mid-July. The first new episode aired on Aug. 3. One of the first scenes in the episode included a kiss between Ned (Wally Kurth) and Olivia (Lisa LoCicero), which caused concern among fans on social media. LoCicero told TVLine the kissing scene was filmed before the coronavirus shutdown.

One reason for the long break was establishing safety protocols for the actors and crew, executive producer Frank Valentini told ABC7 last year. “A lot of fans were, like, ‘When are you coming back? When are you coming back?’ It took that long to establish the protocols and to think through every step of the production process,” he explained, adding that masks are only taken off by actors when filming a scene. “The amount of physical intimacy is limited,” Valentini added. “We’re going to leave a lot more to the imagination.”