Interview: Jackson Says Goodbye To GH

It’s a sad time for many GENERAL HOSPITAL fans. Those long time viewers who have watched Lucky Spencer grow up before their eyes, loving and losing and loving and losing Elizabeth again had become a sort of something to count on, as it was always assumed they’d eventually end up together forever. Not so. At least not this time: This week, Jonathan Jackson leaves the role he created when he was just a young lad of eleven.

The Challenges
Although Jackson believes it’s people’s “natural instinct to look for a bad guy” as to why it’s playing out this way, he says, “The reality is that I had certain things that needed to be adjusted. I think [GH writers and producers] genuinely wanted to be able to do that. But from their perspective — with the demands that they have on them — they weren’t able to provide that to the degree that would have been necessary for me to stay. At that point, I understand.”

What, exactly, does that mean? The amount of material he was shooting each week got to be a bit overwhelming and when asked for a lighter work load, the people in charge at the time didn’t believe that was possible for a character as vital as Lucky. “It’s a different time than it used to be,” Jackson confesses. “I remember in the 90s when I was on the show, it was not even comparable in terms of the amount of work, and it was already an incredible amount of work for everybody. I mean, if you had 20 pages in a day, that was really a lot. Now, it’s 20 to 35, sometimes 40, multiple times in a week. It’s been quite the challenge.

“I’m extremely thankful for the opportunity to be able to do a lot of those insane stories. It would have been nice if there weren’t quite as many,” he adds with a grin. “But the stuff that I got to do with Tony Geary (Luke) around Jake’s death, the intervention show… within the two-year span, we packed probably packed in four years of really great material. I’m grateful for that.”