Bombshell News!! As Michael Departs General Hospital, Chad Duell Introduces Us to… *Sonny’s* Replacement??
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Chad Duell may be leaving General Hospital, but he’s not leaving alone. In fact, we learned during a recent episode of Maurice Benard’s State of Mind vlog, he’s leaving with his TV dad! Or at least, Sonny’s replacement.
As Duell and Benard began their interview, fans couldn’t help but notice the departing actor sitting and talking with a curiously familiar doll cradled in his arms. As you might expect, it didn’t take Benard long at all to ask for an explanation and for Duell to introduce the world to “Mini Maurice.”
And Michael’s portrayer happily complied!
“I made this myself, actually, about five, six years back,” Duell shared. “You know, we do scenes together and we were working heavy together, I kind of wanted to have somebody I can run lines with and just have your kind of presence. And also, it was a situation like a Buddha’s belly type thing.
Just for a good luck thing, I just go between the shirt, rub the nip. It’s a good luck kind of charm for me, especially when I have something big I have to do.”
OK, that’s a bit more intimate than we were expecting, but so is rubbing a statue’s stomach, we suppose, so more power to Duell! Benard, though, had his doubts about how much he and his mini stand-in looked alike, noting that it looks more like Robert DeNiro in The Godfather.
“I used that as my inspiration a little bit when I was making it,” Duell replied, not missing a beat. But unlike DeNiro who, he joked, would probably be ticked about something, Michael’s portrayer happily noted that his doll is “Maurice, so he’s more mellow. Prone to random outbursts.”
Benard chuckled along, saying, “like if [the directors] tell me more voice!”
“He’s a good dude,” Duell concluded, saying, “he’s just my good luck charm.”
That’s nice, Benard noted, before venturing into hilarious territory, asking if Duell was going to sleep with him now that they’re not seeing each other at work all the time. “I do always sleep with him,” the younger actor threw back, opening Little Maurice’s arms wide and prompting his namesake to ask, “So he can hug you and stuff?”
“He does everything you’d want a real Maurice to do,” Duell happily told his the State of Mind host. Well, almost everything.
We’re sure he’s perfectly fine to run lines with, so long as you’re content with it being a one-sided run! Benard, though, still had his doubts that it was a suitable replacement. They just didn’t look enough alike, he insisted.
Duell’s response? Little Maurice is a dead ringer for his namesake back in the ‘90s! Tsk. Replaced by a younger version of himself… There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but we’re having too much fun watching Duell, Benard and Little Maurice to think too hard on it!
As we say goodbye to Duell, take a look at our photo gallery below of all those who are sure to be impacted by Michael’s exit.
