General Hospital’s Rory Gibson On Michael’s Custody Win And Willow’s Devastation
Disorder In The Court
When Gibson shot the scene where Judge Heran read the verdict in his character’s favor, “I felt a weird relation to it as an actor,” he confides. “I didn’t take classes, really; I wasn’t formally taught or anything, so when it comes to acting, I honestly just try to delude myself to the point where I’m believing that what’s happening in the moment of a scene is really happening. And I feel like in those scenes in particular, I wanted Michael to do the same thing. Even though the odds were kind of stacked against him, in his mind, Michael was like, ‘No, there’s no way [I won’t win].’ He’s nervous about it because anything could happen, but I think he had convinced himself so thoroughly that, ‘I have to win this. I’m gonna win this. I’m gonna get my kids. I have to have this situation go my way. There’s no other way it can go!’ ”
Whether it was the power of wishful thinking or not, Michael did, of course, prevail. Once he had secured sole custody of Wiley and Amelia,”It’s an overwhelming sense of relief,” Gibson sums up, calling it “the most significant thing that could be happening in his life, outside of the birth of his new child. In that moment, there’s the relief of, ‘I know my children are going to be with me and are going to be safe, and out from under the thumb of Drew, who has been manipulating the people that I care about.’ ”
But his happiness is tinged with sadness for his ex-wife and for the new reality both he and Willow find themselves in. Explains Gibson, “I think that at his core, Michael still has so much love for Willow, this person that he was with for so long and cared so deeply for. So as happy as he is that the kids are going to be safe and be with him, he does have that knowledge of, ‘Life isn’t going to be simple or easy as it once was.’ And he knows that this is going to destroy Willow, and that makes him sad. But at the same time, he feels like, ‘She kind of got herself into this mess, and I have to be a little cold about this situation and keep trekking forward.’ But he does have an underlying feeling of pain and loss for Willow, because he can only imagine how it would feel if this was happening to him and he hadn’t won.”
