Scott Reeves is making his return to General Hospital as Dr. Steven Webber after an 11-year absence from Port Charles.
“I wondered how long it was going to take before Steven was paroled,” Reeves, 58, joked to TV Insider while confirming his return to the long-running soap opera in an interview published on Wednesday, October 9.
Reeves said that “it was like coming home” when he returned to the GH set.
“I got to work the first day and it was early in the morning. It was just so weird driving up to Prospect [Studios] and going through the guard gate,” the actor recalled. “Literally, from the moment I drove in, I was like, ‘Wasn’t it just a week ago that I left and I was pulling out of here?’”
The star said it was “so surreal and strange” to walk down the same hallways he did so many years ago.
“There were so many things that were the same yet so many things had changed,” he noted to TV Insider. “So much life has happened in the past 11 years for everybody, and with the passage of time, we lose people, the faces change, so that was bittersweet.”
Reeves made his GH debut as Dr. Steven Webber in December 2009. He was a constant on the show until March 2013, when his character was jailed for killing a comatose patient (who had been doing a life sentence for murder) so that a young girl could get an organ transplant.
“Steven did his time, he’s been out of prison for a few months now and has been living in Sedona, Arizona, trying to start over and figure out what life is supposed to look like at this point,” Reeves teased about his return. “He lost his medical license, obviously, when he went to prison, but he felt justified in it.”
Stepping back into Steven’s shoes “was like riding a bike” for Reeves. He also got a mini GH reunion with costar Rick Hearst (Ric Lansing), who also made his return to the show this year after a years-long break.
“I was walking through the parking lot and I hear, from a distance, ‘Scotty Reeves!’” Reeves recalled. “I said, ‘Dude, this is like old home week!’ Rick and I have remained very close over the years.”
While details about Reeves’ character have been kept under wraps thus far, his episodes are set to start airing on Thursday, October 24.