Almost 30 years after the iconic General Hospital storyline that found Stone Cates and Robin Scorpio falling in love amidst heartbreaking diagnoses of AIDS and HIV, the impact is still felt. Not just by viewers, but by the writers and actors involved as well. Yes, even the one performer who had to be massive asshat at a pivotal moment.
After fans posted a video clip of Michael Sutton’s Stone sharing his news at the June 1995 Nurses Ball, Bold & Beautiful leading man Sean Kanan offered a heartfelt and thoughtful reflection on the harsh and bigoted comments made by A.J. Quartermaine that spurred Stone’s passionate declaration.
More: Remembering General Hospital’s Stone
“This was personally a very difficult storyline for me to play,” tweeted Kanan, who played Alan and Monica’s son from 1993-97 and then again from 2012-14. “Having tons of gay friends as well as relatives I was conflicted. My character… exuded ignorance and a lack of self-evolved understanding.”
Whew. That’s an understatement. Longtime viewers will recall that A.J. started out insisting AIDS didn’t deserve special treatment. “It’s just another illness,” he dismissed, putting a table full of family and friends on uneasy alert.
This was personally a very difficult storyline for me to play. Having tons of gay friends as well as relatives I was conflicted. My character, AJ Quartermaine exuded ignorance and a lack of self-evolved understanding. Ultimately I embraced the story because it was the story that… https://t.co/N1tHmz7w7q
— Sean Kanan (@seankanan) June 22, 2023
When Robin, our beloved Kimberly McCullough, wondered if A.J. truly believed that AIDS wasn’t all that important, he doubled down. “There’s a lot of very horrible diseases out there that deserve our attention and our money,” he said, citing breast cancer and tuberculosis. (He even went as far back as the plague in 1348. Who knew A.J. was an infectious-disease scholar of this caliber?)
General Hospital revisited Stone and Robin in 2010, when Robin was trapped.
Credit: Image: ABC
Then A.J.’s barbs took on an even more hateful tone. “The only people who get AIDS are gays who act irresponsibly, IV drug users who are hellbent on destroying themselves anyways, and people who are so damn stupid that they deserve to get it,” he insisted, repeating what was — and unfortunately still is — a commonly held belief in the real world. “All you need to protect yourself is half a brain.”
Ew. Gross. While the audience needed to see Stone’s bravery in standing up to this terrible rhetoric, it’s still hard to hear or read. And it was sure tough for Kanan to play. “Ultimately, I embraced the story because it was the story that was so important rather than my character,” he said of his catalytic lines of dialogue. “I am still very proud of the work the show produced about a socially relevant and humanistically important subject.”
As he should be. Stone and Robin didn’t just teach A.J. a lot — they reached the hearts and minds of General Hospital fans as well.
A.J.’s not the only soap character to do something heinous and unforgettable. Look back at a whole slew of malicious misdeeds via our gallery below.
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June 26, 2023 at 01:22PM
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