Disney/Bahareh Ritter
October Surprise: As The World Turns alum assumes the role of Lucas Jones on General Hospital early next month. The news was first reported by TV Insider.
Big news for Port Charles watchers: Van Hansis, best known to daytime fans for his As The World Turns run as Luke Snyder from 2005-10, has been tapped to take over the role of Lucas Jones on General Hospital. His first airdate will be Friday, October 4 — although it is possible that a Major League Baseball post-season wild card game will preempt the show on Thursday, October 3, pushing the episode slated to air on Friday off until Monday, October 7.
Hansis, a Massachusetts native, earned three Daytime Emmy Award nominations for his ATWT work, two as Outstanding Younger Actor and one for Outstanding Supporting Actor. He notched four additional Daytime Emmy acting nominations for playing Thom on the web-turned-streaming-turned cable series EastSiders.
The actor was part of a trailblazing gay storyline on ATWT; Luke and the character of Noah Mayer, played by Jake Silbermann, shared the first same-sex male romantic kiss to air on soaps (it took place on August 17, 2007). Hansis noted to TV Insider that “it feels great” to be playing another gay character in the daytime landscape, enthusing, “I love that Lucas is not the only gay character on the show…. it’s great that we’re in a place where it’s so casual, just like how it is in life. There are gay people in life so there should be gay people on soaps and queer people and trans people and all of that. So, the fact that it’s so ingrained and it’s not like ‘the gay character’ or ‘the gay storyline’ feels really nice.”
JPI
Kiss Me: On ATWT, Hansis’s Luke shared a history-making smooch with Jake Silbermann’s Noah in 2007.
The character of Lucas was born on GH back in 1989. He is the biological son of the late Cheryl Stansbury and the late Julian Jerome, though, for a time, his father was believed to be Robert Scorpio, who had been romantically linked to Cheryl. Lucas was adopted by Bobbie Spencer Jones and Tony Jones during their marriage. Lucas came out as gay in high school, in the fall of 2005. After his father, Tony, died in 2006, Lucas moved to Seattle, but he returned to Port Charles in 2014 and became intertwined with his newly-minted family members: biological father Julian and half sister Sam. Now a doctor, Lucas began working at the hospital and was pursued by two handsome co-workers, Brad and Felix. Lucas got serious with Brad, and they tied the knot in 2016. In 2018, Lucas was overjoyed when he and Brad adopted baby Wiley, the biological son of Willow Tait and Shiloh Archer — but his family, and marriage, fell apart in 2020 when it came out that Brad had actually taken Nelle and Michael’s biological son, the thought-to-be-dead Jonah, and passed him off as Wiley. Lucas divorced Brad over his duplicity. Lucas then left town off-camera in 2021 and returned to Port Charles most recently in January 2024, on the sad occasion of mother Bobbie’s death.
Lucas was played by several different actors as a baby, infant, and young child. As an adolescent and high schooler, he was played by Logan O’Brien, then J. Evan Bonifant, then C.J. Thomason, then Ryan Carnes, then Ben Hogestyn. Carnes returned to play Lucas from 2014-2020, and after Matt Trudeau made several appearances starting in late 2020, Carnes returned again briefly in 2024 as part of the tribute to his on-screen mother, the late Jacklyn Zeman, and her character, Bobbie.
Hansis has a key connection to the GH cast in Maura West (Ava), who played Carly on ATWT. On GH, she now plays his paternal aunt. The actor told TV Insider that when they taped their first scenes together as Ava and Lucas, “She didn’t know I got cast and I was coming out of a wardrobe fitting she was grabbing her wardrobe for the day [and] and she just looked at me and it was like she saw a ghost. She was like, ‘Van?’ And she gave me a big hug and then she was like, ‘Wait, are you Lucas?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah,’ and she screamed so loudly that the security guard came down to see because they thought somebody was getting hurt or something.”
With the recent return of Lucas’s ex, Parry Shen’s Brad Cooper, to the canvas, might there be another chapter in their romance in store, or does GH have another storyline purpose in mind for the character? Stay tuned to find out!
Disney/Christine Bartolucci
Heading Home: Ryan Carnes’s Lucas (pictured with on-screen sister Carly, played by Laura Wright) last appeared in January 2024.
