General Hospital fans are in for a big treat when Michael E. Knight, known for his nearly thirty-year run as All My Children's Tad Martin, arrives in Port Charles on Monday, September 30. Sadly, that treat won't be his reprisal of Pine Valley's "Tad the Cad" as many soap opera fans hoped (insert a million crying emojis here). However, the ABC soap opera's head writers, Chris Van Etten and Dan O'Connor, promise that what they have in store for Knight is oh-so-good and that his new character is "capable of all manner of shenanigans."
The pair spoke with Entertainment Weekly about what fans can expect when Knight makes his debut next week, and they tease that his new alter ego -- who looks quite dapper in the first-look photo -- will have an impact on "a number of people in Port Charles who are in trouble" as well as how those characters' stories are "solved or further complicated."
One of those characters will be James Patrick Stuart, who now plays GH's Valentin Cassadine but used to play Will Cortlandt alongside Knight in the early '90s on AMC.
That's pretty much all of the juice that Van Etten and O'Connor are spilling at the moment, other than that Knight brings a special something to the canvas that made them completely rethink the amount of time he will be sticking around in Port Charles.
"I knew he could bring a little zest to the General Hospital canvas. He's his own special brand of zest!" enthuses Van Etten. "As we were writing his character, we found out that 'Oh, we have even more use for him!' It's helpful to know who the actors are in this situation. We have lots of ideas on how we can expand his character and cross-pollinate his character."
While it is rather disappointing that Van Etten and O'Connor chose not to resurrect Tad Martin, the head writers say that they haven't ruled out bringing other familiar Pine Valley residents to Port Charles.
"We have conversations when we have these actors come back about whether it's more useful or not to resurrect their characters," Van Etten reveals. "We'll continue to have these as the opportunity arises."
As daytime fans know, Knight played AMC's Tad Martin from 1982 to 1986, 1988 to 1990, and then from 1992 until the finale on ABC in 2011. He also popped up in the short-lived online version of the soap opera in 2013, and he briefly played the role of Dr. Simon Neville on The Young and the Restless.
For more from the GH writers on Knight's future in Port Charles, click here.
What do you think about GH's writers deciding not to resurrect AMC's Tad Martin? How do you feel about the details they revealed about Michael E. Knight's new character? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.
