RICKY MIDDLESWORTH/ABC
With the recent developments involving the character of Lulu and General Hospital‘s not-so-secret plans to bring the character back in the form of a recast, it seems like the relative domestic calm Sam and Dante have been enjoying may soon experience some turbulence. Dominic Zamprogna, who plays Dante, is looking forward to the drama, but has become a huge fan of the “Sante” pairing. “I like everything about it,” he says. “It’s revealed different sides of him and shown new things about Dante. In talking to Kelly [Monaco, Sam], we’ve discussed how it actually shows different sides of both of them, together and apart.”
Moving Forward, Looking Back
Dante and Lulu’s relationship kicked off not long after Zamprogna first joined the show back in 2009, and the character — who was played first by Julie Marie Berman and then by Emme Rylan — was the actor’s only significant love interest for his first long stretch on the show. So, the actor had little experience playing a Dante who wasn’t intermingled with Lulu when she was rendered comatose back in 2020. He muses, “It was interesting to see who he was without her, because you saw who he was before her, but then he spent so much time with her and it started to feel like he was losing his own identity a little bit.”
It was refreshing for the actor when he started working more closely with Monaco. “With Sam and Dante, there wasn’t this dependency on each other, which it felt like Dante and Lulu constantly ended up having in the end,” Zamprogna notes. “Being back on the show [since his return in 2020], working with someone different, it brings up different things in the characters and we’ve brought out different things in each other [as actors]. That’s what I’ve enjoyed about it. And Kelly is fiery and fierce and always fun to work with.”
As a bonus, Zamprogna has gotten to explore what he calls “the blended family aspect” of Sam and Dante’s coupling, as both characters have children from previous relationships (Rocco with Lulu for him; Danny with Jason and Scout with Drew for her). “The times where we get to play that blended family element has been so interesting; it’s interesting playing a dad to a kid who isn’t your son. So, the whole thing has been great.”
