General Hospital Alum Ryan Paevey Dishes Why He Left GH And Life After Port Charles

General Hospital spoilers tease that Soap Opera Digest features an interview with Ryan Paevey, formerly Nathan West of GH and currently Donovan Darcy of several Hallmark movies! He talked about why he made the decision to leave General Hospital.

General Hospital News – Ryan Paevey Decided To Leave General Hospital In 2018

Ryan Paevey decided to leave General Hospital in 2018 after playing Detective Nathan West for four years. As General Hospital viewers will recall, Nathan was a cop, leaving behind his pregnant wife, Maxie Jones (Kirsten Storms). He was killed in the line of duty in a standoff with Cesar Faison (Anders Hove) who died shortly thereafter, right after discovering Nathan was his son with Liesl Obrecht (Kathleen Gati).

Paevey says, reflecting on his time in Port Charles, “GH was my first thing; I was a total newcomer. When I showed up and they offered me the job, I was like, I’ll take it! You’ll say yes to anybody that will say yes to you. It’s not like I got to be choosy. I didn’t have a resume that commanded that. So, I got lucky when they created Nathan. They could very easily have created a jerk for me to play and then nobody would’ve liked me and I probably would’ve gotten fired and that would be that! I’d probably be back at the sushi restaurant, and life would look very different. But I was lucky the character they created for me was a nice guy, a likeable guy.” He had previously held a job as a bartender and server at the Sushi Roku in Santa Monica, California prior to landing the role of Nathan.

GH News – Detective Nathan West’s Farewell

Detective Nathan West’s charm secured Paevey’s position in the soap for the full term of his contract and also inspired a poignant farewell arc and emotional funeral. Paevey continues, “Nathan got a serious send-off! I’m blown away by the level of canvas mobilization that I observed in my exit. It will always kind of dumbfound me a little bit, but in a good way. So many people that I had grown close to gave such absolutely mind-blowing performances for what was really a storyline that took care of my character. I was really honored.

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I was sitting over here like, what did I do right, man? I lucked into that storyline and everybody involved did a really, really good job. Paevey’s castmates did such a good job when they were shooting Nathan’s open-casket funeral, Paevey said, “My only real job that day was to hold my breath and hide crying. These people who had become close friends of mine were, like, crying on my chest, I mean, obviously, I responded. There were definitely some takes where there are tears on both our faces! My job was to make it so you didn’t see that.”

General Hospital News – Post-GH Years

Paevey summed up his GH years as a rather strange time in his life, considering that he had never wanted to be an actor, but with GH, it was the first time where his managers told him to quit his day job! Even though acting had been new territory for him, he learned a lot about the acting business, but wondered if he was such a good actor, after all, mentioning the hateful Twitter campaign that arose trying to get rid of the character and fire him!

Yet, he chose to leave and said he didn’t have anything lined up. A bit part in “Brooklyn 911” showed up with no more work than as if he’d been hired as an extra, and he was willing to go back to being a sushi bar employee! But then came Hallmark! He was hired for first one movie, then another, as the dashing Donovan Darcy, and the rest is history!

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