‘General Hospital’ Star Mark Lawson Says One of His ‘One Life to Live’ Co-Stars Thought He Was a ‘Complete Psycho’

Long before he was cast as Dustin Phillips on the long-running ABC daytime soap opera, General Hospital, Mark Lawson played Brody Lovett on the now-defunct ABC soap, One Life to Live. Recently, Lawson spoke about his screen test for the role and what he learned about one of his co-stars’ initial thoughts about him.

Mark Lawson was on ‘One Life to Live’ years before ‘General Hospital’

Lawson first joined One Life to Live in 2008, playing the character of Brody. The character was a former Navy SEAL that was hired by Adriana Cramer to get Gigi Morasco’s attention away from Rex Balsom. Brody was the father of Gigi’s son who she thought died in combat while she was pregnant. But it turns out, Brody was still alive and this information was found out by Dorian Lord, Adriana’s mother. It turns out, however, Brody wasn’t really Shane’s father.

After a series of events including him being distraught over the situation and shooting Rex, Brody ends up getting committed because of his mental health issues and severe post-traumatic stress disorder. While committed, he ends up befriending Jessica Buchanan. He gets better and comes to terms with everything.

During the course of his time on the show, Brody ends up in romantic relationships with both Jessica and her sister, Natalie Buchanan. At one time, both sisters end up pregnant and he believes that he may be the father of both. That turns out to be false. Once the truth comes out that Brody wasn’t the father of Natalie’s son and was hiding it from everyone, he suffers a relapse. And is committed again. By the end of the series on ABC in 2012, Brody tells Jessica that he has been released and is better. He leaves town, taking another Navy job.

He recently spoke about a memory from ‘One Life to Live’

In an interview with Soap Opera Digest, Lawson talked about his time on One Life to Live. He explained why one of his co-stars, Farah Fath, who played Gigi Morasco, may have gotten the wrong first impression about him.

Detailing his first screen test for the show, he said, “My girlfriend had a rule that I couldn’t move in until I knew I was going to propose within the year. On a Sunday night, I told her I was ready to move in — and on Monday morning, I got the call for a screen test. I was in New York like, two days later screen-testing and then a day after that I got the job. I was at this point in my relationship where I almost didn’t get on the plane. Everybody on her side of the family said, ‘You’ve got to go and do this.’ My mom, who’s been the champion for my acting career my whole life, said, ‘I don’t know, Mark, she’s really great….’ So I was really conflicted.”

This cast member revealed that she thought this about him initially

Lawson explained that when he arrived to New York for the audition, all of the men vying for the role were “scoping each other out,” trying to figure out which of them most looked like the role of Brody. The actor says that he walked onto the set feeling “electrified.”

He continued, “They let me do one take, then Frank [Valentini, then-executive producer, now GH’s EP] came down and gave me some notes and before we did a second take, I was talking to myself, like, ‘You better get this right, right now!’ One of the guys on the crew looked at me and said, ‘You know, Mark, we can hear everything you’re saying.’ I was on set with Farah Fath and it kind of got revealed to me later on that she thought I was a complete psycho because I was so wired up!”

General Hospital airs weekdays on ABC.