Outside of his 1991 Soap Opera Digest Award nomination for Favorite Villain: Primetime (for playing Michael Sharpe on Falcon Crest), veteran actor Gregory Harrison had never been in the running for an acting award for his work on soaps. But that all changed this year, when he found himself nominated for a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor for his poignant portrayal of Gregory Chase, who battled ALS before passing away in 2024 on General Hospital. He opened up to Digest about what the recognition means to him and looked back on his run in Port Charles.
The Pleasure is Mine
“I don’t think of acting as a competitive sport,” muses Harrison. “I never paid much attention to nominations or lack of them. I’m a process-oriented guy. I don’t do things in the hopes of a result as much as I love the process of every job I’ve had. I love Hollywood, I love show business, I love acting — but I love the day to day. I love developing characters. I guess there’s some validation in [this nomination], but I don’t do it for the validation. I do it because it’s so much fun for me!”
That proved to be especially true when it came to playing Gregory. “I loved being able to calibrate the slow erosion of Gregory Chase’s abilities because of this disease he had,” Harrison says. “And being able to find nuance and believability and show that while this guy is losing his faculties, he’s developing even more dignity and even more humanity. I always believed personally that within every curse, there was a blessing, and within every blessing, there was a curse. I played that with Gregory and that, to me, is the fun of [acting]. I had some good writers who had done their research, and I personally had done so much research on ALS.”
His research process began decades ago. “I had played a character with ALS 20 years ago on Touched by an Angel,” he explains. “In that episode of the show, I portrayed him in his final months and portrayed him dying. So, I had sort of gone through this before and learned a lot about the disease. But this opportunity on General Hospital gave me a chance, instead of [packing it all] in a one-hour show, to really calibrate the tiny little nuances of a day-to-day degradation of abilities and how to find incremental hope and dignity within that context. All the research, all of the nuance and the fine-tuning is, is where the fun lies — not in the bows and the reviews and the awards, but in the work. I love the work.”
Of course, how much his performance resonated with GH fans touched Harrison deeply. “That people were moved is a reward for me,” he smiles. “I’ve had lots of fan reactions — people who have members of their family with ALS or who have experience with the disease have thanked me for for my performance and that means a lot to me.”
Still, the accolades are just gravy to Harrison. “Acting isn’t a competitive sport,” he notes, “and I think it’s really hard to try and compare one performance with another performance. I’ve never valued myself as an actor based on being more popular than some other guy, you know?” What does matter to him is his longevity in such a difficult industry. “I’ve had 52 year acting career. And if you had asked me at 20 when I first hit Hollywood, ‘What do you want?’ I would have said, ‘I want to work until the day I drop. I want to be an actor til the day I drop’ And I have fulfilled that and then some. And so for me, that’s the reward. I feel that reward all day, every day. And I guess to, at 75, get an actual nomination from my peers … it’s validation, I appreciate it, and I’m going to be appreciative of whatever happens. I’m glad to be in the mix. But mostly, I’m just going [to the ceremony, which takes place on Friday, October 17] because it’ll be fun to be with all these people from the show who I loved and enjoyed working with for three-and-a-half years.”
Sweet Sorrow
When it came to constructing the reel he submitted for Emmy consideration, “For me, it was pretty easy,” he shares. Due to the nature of his storyline, which culminated in Gregory’s demise, “I had kind of an advantage [putting together his submission] because the beginning, middle and end was almost created for me,” he says. “All I had to do was decide which scenes from the beginning, the middle and the end I was going to put on my reel.
“I remembered a few scenes in particular that I liked,” he continues, “and that I thought were representative of my work, and they gave me the greatest sendoff I’ve ever seen on a soap opera. So, I put the death scene in, of course, with flashbacks included and all that. I could have just put that in and it probably would have been effective! I felt like that was a good representation of the last year of my work.”
He also included the touching scenes of Gregory struggling while officiating the wedding of his son Chase to Brook Lynn. “That was so dramatic,” he recalls, “because Gregory locked up, as ALS patients do, and Jane Elliot [Tracy] comes up and helps me breathe my way through it. And I included the scene just following that, where Jane and I are discussing the possibility of, ‘If we had met younger, would we, would we have had something special?’ I thought that was particularly poignant.”
Harrison says that “being able to work with such an incredible actress” as Elliot was a highlight of his time at GH. “I loved that. And she was so thrilled to be able to go from playing this matriarch who was harsh and angry so much of the time to playing [a softer version of Tracy]. You could see the 17-year-old in her character when she was with me and that was just so delightful to play.”
Pleasure Principle: Harrison loved working opposite Jane Elliot (Tracy).Disney/Christine Bartolucci
Are We Having Fun Yet?
The nomination is a nice way to round out what was a surprisingly rich first-time daytime experience for Harrison. “I never did a soap before this,” he points out. “I waited until my 70s to do my first daytime soap! It’s one of the normal pathways for actors who are building careers to do a soap early on and perfect their chops and then move into nighttime television or features or whatever they do. Somehow, I created a career without ever having done a soap and I was terrified, always, at the thought of doing one because of the page count [the number of script pages actors perform in a day]. I always went, ‘No, I can do 7, 8 pages a day on whatever series I’m on, but 38 pages a day is just beyond my imagination!’ Why I waited until I was in my 70s, I don’t know!”
When he first accepted the gig, he recalls, “Terror struck, and I went, ‘What have you just done? You’re 71 years old and now you are going to test your brain like this?’ I hadn’t been that terrified since junior high school, when I’d throw up before I made an entrance in the school play. But after 10 shows, it was fun. I realized I could do it and then they offered me a 3-year contract, so I said, ‘Absolutely!’ And it was the most fun job. I fell in love with my castmates, particularly the ones in my little story bubble — my sons, Josh [Swickard, Chase] and Michael [Easton, ex-Finn] and I were, we all, all synced up so beautifully and were so supportive of each other. Nancy Grahn [Alexis] and I hit it off and played so many scenes together and then the last year, working with Jane was such a highlight for me as an actor because you rise to the level of the person you’re playing opposite and she brings it. Frank [Valentini, executive producer] was so supportive. Really, the upstairs and downstairs crew at General Hospital is extraordinary, just extraordinary.”
Suited Up
It’s been a while since Harrison has attended a black-tie event like the Daytime Emmys. “It’s fun to put on a tux every once in a while,” he says. “I don’t live in Hollywood, I’ve never lived in Hollywood, and I’ve never been a red carpet guy, really. I’ve been on red carpets — I’ve done a lot of theater, a lot of Broadway shows, so there are opening nights and Tony Awards and things like that, so it’s not a totally foreign concept to me, but I will admit I haven’t put on a tux in about four or five years. But my tux still fits, so it wasn’t that long ago. The tux is ready and I really am looking forward to it. It’s not, like, an uncomfortable evening that I’m going to survive. I’m going to have fun!”
And knowing he has a one-in-five chance of taking home the prize, he has given some consideration to what he might say in an acceptance speech. “I’ve thought about it because if I do win the award, I don’t want to walk up there and be an idiot!” he proclaims. “On the other hand, I don’t expect to win. If you look at the category, I mean, there’s four incredibly handsome, young, studly leading men and me [laughs]. I don’t know what the voters are going to lean toward, and it doesn’t really matter to me, but I’m honored to have been validated by the voters and if I win it’ll be double the icing on the cake for me, because playing the part was where the award was. Having a career at 75 is where the award was.”
If he did come home with a shiny statuette, though, he knows just where he’d put it. “I have a corner above my mantel in my living room that has a signed surfboard, two surfing trophies that I’ve won over the years, a golf trophy that I’ve won and a couple of acting things from my childhood — you know, Best Actor at Avalon High School in Catalina,” he says. “I guess I would put it up there next to them!”
