General Hospital’s Dominic Zamprogna Opens Up About His Exit as Dante: ‘I Call It Kind of a Mental Health Break’

As Dominic Zamprogna celebrates his 15th anniversary with General Hospital on June 22, he has another reason to cheer, too: that the soap welcomed him home with open arms after his 2018 exit. When he hung up Dante’s badge, the native of Canada was eager to see how he’d fare in Hollywood. “I came here with this job and didn’t know any casting people,” he tells Soap Opera Digest. “I was almost 40, and I was like, ‘OK, worst-case scenario, the show gets canceled tomorrow, I haven’t done my due diligence in this town to make sure people know me… ’

“I’m a terrible networker,” he adds, “but the one thing you have to do is audition, and for the longest time here, it wasn’t really possible to do other projects. But in 2018, Frank [Valentini, executive producer] let me go out and do this show in Calgary, and I had actually screen-tested the two previous years for other pilots. I realized, ‘That’s really the only exposure I’ve had to other casting directors down here. I should really kind of get out there.’ So I did.”

In hindsight, Zamprogna sees benefits of his time away from the soap that go well beyond contact-making. “I call it kind of a mental health break because I’ve never been in the same place for this long, playing the same character,” he says. “I just felt, ‘I think I need to go and kind of do something else for a while.’ And in doing that, I achieved what I wanted to do — I met a lot of casting directors, you take general meetings, you do a bunch of auditions. You kind of get your hustle back, and that’s important, too.

“Even now, outside of this show,” he continues, “I work on two or three other projects that I’m trying to get going, and that only happens from hustling and getting things done. [The break] kind of snapped me back into that frame of mind.”

As for Zamprogna’s return as Sonny and Olivia’s only child together, that’s a no-brainer. “I legitimately missed my friends that I’ve made here. Even when you have a bad day, as everyone does, you’re surrounded by people that you care about and that care about you,” he says, “and I missed being part of a team. And so when I had kind of accomplished what I wanted to accomplish, I was grateful they wanted me to come back.”