Maurice Benard is setting the record straight. The All My Children alum, 62, has been part of the General Hospital family for over 30 years, starring as Sonny Corinthos since August 1993. Fans however began to worry his time on the long-running soap might be coming to an end after he recently said on the Soapy podcast he doesn't know if he could "last that long" when asked whether he'd be playing Sonny into his 80s. "I don't think, mentally, I can keep going that long, and I don't know if I could act on GH if I'm not at least at 90 percent. That's the truth," he confessed.
Viewers are not to fret however, as he has since maintained on an episode of Richard Taite's podcast We're Out of Time that he is definitely not leaving, and that he has about a year left on his contract. "There have always been a lot of people [saying that]. I think they're saying I'm dying, too, like I have cancer or something," he speculated.
"Look, I'm going to retire, but I don't think it's going to be before I'm 65," he further shared, adding that for now, he has no problem letting "people say what they say," but acquiesced that the show can in fact be "mentally taxing."
Then reflecting on when he does retire, he noted he doesn't "do well without structure," and so he would "maybe" do more of his podcast, State of Mind, which focuses on the importance of mental health. He also said: "Financially, I'm pretty good, but you're right, I already know what happens to my mind when I'm living in it alone."
Bernard recently opened up about his own mental health in conversation with Woman's World, revealing how Sonny's storyline in which his mental health goes haywire similarly impacted Bernard's. He first opened up about his battle with both bipolar disorder and anxiety on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2004, and in 2006, his character Sonny was also diagnosed as bipolar.
"I called in sick for two weeks — and I've never called in sick," he said. "I was in a really rough period where I didn't sleep at all and had enormous anxiety. It was physical, as well as emotional. I was in bad shape. I didn't know if I'd ever act again."
"The people who got me through were Steve Burton and Jonathan Jackson," he revealed, shouting out his co-stars. "It would have been very difficult without them. And I'm so grateful to [executive producer' Frank Valentini, who was just so generous and incredible about it."
"It was scary, and my first day back to work was Sonny on a ledge, wanting to kill himself," he went on, adding: "Thankfully, Bryan Craig was with me, because he brought Morgan back. I said, 'I know I've helped you a lot, but now I can't get through this without you, man!' He was just great, and the beautiful thing about General Hospital is, I think there's many actors here who would be."