Script-Flipping Truth You Didn’t Know About General Hospital’s Sonny Corinthos
Everybody including Maurice Benard was getting his origins completely wrong.
With the show running for 60 years, you'd expect to know every single character so well that no detail is left out. Especially those characters who have been on screen for about 30 years and are still central to the show's storyline.
For General Hospital, Sonny Corinthos is definitely one of those characters who fit the bill.
Anyone who has watched the soap at least once from 1993 to the present day would know who Sonny is and what his story is all about. No matter how many problems he faced, including memory loss, he never lost the essence of himself.
One detail about the fan-favorite mobster, however, seemed so obvious to everyone that no one even questioned it. As it turns out, that one detail is the one that the majority of viewers usually get completely wrong.
Maurice Benard, an actor who originated the role of Sonny and continues to portray him to this day, revealed his character's most surprising secret on his own State Of Mind podcast, which airs on YouTube.
“Sonny is half Cuban, half Greek <...> Not even Italian. But I didn’t care about that because they told me he was half Cuban half Greek after about a year and a half, so I’m like, ‘he’s Italian,'” the actor explained to his co-star Tabyana Ali, a podcast guest.
The revelation makes perfect sense, given the character's name and the actor's "full-blooded Spanish" heritage.
However, both viewers and Benard himself were probably so influenced by the classic fictional trope of the Italian Mafia running all the criminal life in the world that they never thought of Sonny having a completely different background.
Whether you knew the truth about Sonny's origins or not, it probably did not affect your perception of the character at all, just added a layer to consider while thinking about his culture and upbringing. However, these layers are exactly what can keep the viewers hooked for so many years.
Tune in to learn more about Sonny Corinthos in upcoming episodes of General Hospital Monday through Friday on ABC.