Kelly Monaco’s ‘General Hospital’ Exit Stirs Reactions With Co-Stars

General Hospital said goodbye to Kelly Monaco after over 20 years, and her co-stars are reacting to the sudden departure. Monaco joined the long-running soap opera in 2003 as Sam McCall. On the Oct. 24 episode, Sam died after donating part of her liver to Alexa Havins’ Lulu Spencer. Sam’s goodbye included an emotional moment with her leading man, Dante, played by Dominic Zamprogna, who gave an emotional speech at her bedside.

Zamprogna told Soap Opera Digest what it was like filming those scenes, revealing, “My monologues were her last scenes, so we finished those scenes and I basically said goodbye to Kelly then and there.” Additionally, the actor shared that during her final weeks of filming, “She was amazing. Amazing, amazing, amazing.”

“We’re kind of living a bit of a fake reality on the show,” Zamprogna continued. “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.”

Even though Sam is dead, characters on General Hospital have been known to come back from the dead so Zamprogna isn’t ruling anything out, especially since he still checks in on Monaco every week. “It’s a soap,” he said. “Who the heck knows what’s gonna happen?” As of now, though, Sam McCall is no more but it’s always possible that that could change in the future, even if Monaco was blindsided.

Meanwhile, longtime General Hospital star Wally Kurth, who plays Ned Quartermaine, told Us Weekly, “She was there for 20-something years. I work at GH sometimes, too, and I drove into the studio, and there was a sign with LCD lights that said, ‘Kelly Monaco, bring her back,’ and it was outside our studio, just flashing lights for like a week, and that was from fans. It happens to us all. I’ve been fired a few times. You can’t take it personally. We’re actors.”

Kelly Monaco is the latest actor to leave General Hospital. The series also said goodbye to Adam J. Harrington, Michael Easton, Gregory Harrison, and Nicholas Alexander Chavez just this year.