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William Lipton Dishes Cameron's Grief on General Hospital
General Hospital star William Lipton (Cameron) is deep in storyline with on-screen mom Rebecca Herbst (Elizabeth) amidst the fallout from stepdad Franco's (Roger Howarth) death. Lipton chatted to Soap Opera Digest about filming those emotional scenes and what might be in Cameron's future.
Cameron has endured quite a bit of loss lately. Lipton dished:
He lost his friend Oscar [Garren Stitt], and then he lost Franco the first time when he was kidnapped by Shiloh [Coby Ryan McLaughlin], and I think a lot of the emotions that Cameron expressed were a culmination of all this loss that he had felt…. Dev’s [Ashton Arbab] passing was so sudden, and so was Franco’s. Those are different elements that are involved with that sadness and anger, especially with someone who’s like the first real father figure that Cameron has had. His biological father [Chad Brannon] died, and Lucky [Jonathan Jackson] and Jason [Steve Burton], they were not there for Cameron during his most formative years. Franco, who was actually there to support him, [was] this extremely important figure in his life. There’s a sense of anger, a sense of loss, a sense of desperation, a sense of wishing that it’s not true — that all comes in together to create a complex picture of Cameron’s state.
Filming scenes in the morgue when Cameron visited Franco's body was a unique experience. The Daytime Emmy nominee recalled:
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As you know, I pulled out the body tray where Franco is in, but when we were rehearsing and blocking it, he was not there, so I was just kind of opening it, making sure I had control over it, and I remember one time when we were doing the scene, making sure everything’s okay, I opened it, and then Roger’s just lying there dead! I was like [startled], 'Oh, my gosh, what are you doing there?!'
How will Cam move forward without Franco? Lipton previewed:
It’s going to be very, very detrimental. I think that Cameron, if he is not able to heal properly with accepting the support from the loved ones that he still has — his mom, his brothers, his friends — then he’s going to be in trouble. I think that if he doesn’t approach this healing in the right way that he’s going to find himself in a lot of pain.
