After months of downright dirty behavior that made him an enemy list nearly as long as the Port Charles phone book, someone finally went to extremes to take down General Hospital‘s Drew Cain and shot him in the back — twice — on the September 2 episode. Soap Opera Digest got the inside scoop on Drew’s fall from grace and the show’s new whodunit from Cameron Mathison, who plays the villain/victim.
Building A Mystery
Mathison assumed the role of Drew back in 2021, and the once-heroic Navy SEAL has taken a massive turn toward the sleazy over the past year. But unsavory behavior like sleeping with Nina while courting her married daughter, Willow, is small potatoes compared to the even more underhanded actions he’s taken in recent months, such as blackmailing Portia, trying to block Scout from seeing her late mother Sam’s family and using his political leverage as a congressman to order the demolition of the Quartermaine family crypt and send insurance fraud investigators after noble Stella.
These manipulations are all in a day’s work for Mathison, who understands why the show’s writers went to such extremes in depicting Drew’s villainy. “Obviously, everybody hates me like crazy, but at the same time, they had to do that for the last four or five months,” he reasons. “They can’t just have people not like me. They have to have people want to kill me! And in order to have multiple people want to kill you, you’ve got to be pretty despicable — and they’ve done a really good job with that with Drew!”
Playing such a scoundrel has taken Mathison very outside of his comfort zone, but he’s found great freedom in embracing what the writers have thrown at him. “I’ve trusted the process and now, it’s become weirdly therapeutic,” he shares. “I try to be a really nice human and a good, solid person in my life and I’ve gone through a lot of big life challenges in a very short stretch of time,” including the end of his decades-long marriage and, earlier this year, the
loss of his home in the Southern California wildfires. “I go to work and get to be such a jerk — it’s almost like my little fantasy escape. I don’t know if it’s good for my psyche or not, but I’ve really leaned into it [
laughs]!
“Every time I read a script, I’m like, ‘Oh, my god, Drew, are you kidding me?!,’ ” the actor continues. “And them I’m like, ‘Yup! Let’s go. Let’s just dive in!’ I like to just really let it fester and have it come out and it’s been interesting and it’s been challenging. It’s been very exploratory for me … and also weirdly easy. The more I gave into it and really trusted the process and the writers — I don’t change anything, and I don’t ask to change anything, I just kind of go in and do it — it’s just become easier and easier. That’s maybe a little bit scary, but also really fun!”
The Big Finish?
Just as he embraced bringing out Drew’s worst qualities, Mathison is embracing that GH chose him to be the central figure of the “Who Shot Drew?” mystery. “I’m super-excited about it,” he grins. “You know, I watched Dallas back in the day, and in many ways, it’s very in line with the ‘Who Shot JR?’ story. I don’t care if you are the punching bag for all of Port Charles, you’re still the center of the story and that feels really cool. I’m like, ‘Bring it on! Let me be the punching bag! I got this — and I’m gonna punch right back!’ “
He brought equal zeal to playing out the shooting. “I was really excited to take it on,” he declares. “It’s not every day that you get to take a gunshot on camera, and I really wanted to get that right and fall hard. And then, from the audience perspective, I knew, ‘The viewers are gonna love this!’ They all want to shoot Drew! Everybody wants Drew shot and dead. So I wanted to make sure that I gave them my all.”
Down And Out: Mathison’s Drew hit the floor after a mystery assailant shot him in the back.
ABC
Do you want Drew to survive? Who do you suspect is the shooter? Let us know your thoughts about this big GH twist in the comments below!
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