Nicholas Alexander Chavez will not be returning to General Hospital after all.
The actor, who portrayed Spencer Cassadine on the daytime drama, had taken a leave of absence from the series. That has now gone from temporary to permanent according to TVLine.
While General Hospital has not officially confirmed the news, multiple sources told the outlet that Chavez won’t be coming back to the ABC soap.
Chavez left the role earlier this year to shoot Season 2 of Ryan Murphy’s Netflix anthology Monster. His character, along with his ex Esme, were presumed dead after they were injected with a drug and fell off a boat into France’s Seine River in his final episode.
Some sharp fans noticed back in late March that Chavez was removed from the show’s closing credits, hinting at his ultimate departure.
When Chavez was cast in Monster last summer, a rep for General Hospital noted at the time, “We support Nicholas’s endeavors and look forward to having him return to General Hospital once this project is wrapped.”
The actor began shooting Monster in December and exited GH in late January.
Chavez joined GH in 2021, winning a Daytime Emmy the following year for Outstanding Younger Performer in a Drama Series.
“It’s changed everything about me,” Chavez told People.com about his GH role. “Before the show, I was selling cars in Florida. I live across the country now. I was driving my dad’s old Jeep and now, I’m sitting in a car that I paid for. This show has given me the opportunity to become my own guy. It’s also given me the gift few people get in life — the privilege to earn an income doing what I love to do every single day. If I’m not the luckiest guy in the world, I’ve got to be damned close.”
Many who know General Hospital have compared the onscreen romance between Spencer and Tabyana Ali’s character Trina to Luke and Laura’s, a comparison the actor called “the greatest compliment we could ever get.”
Chavez will play Lyle Menéndez in Season 2 of Monster, officially titled Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story. He will star opposite relative newcomer Cooper Koch (as brother Erik).
Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny also star in the sophomore season of the series as the brothers’ parents, Jose and Kitty Menéndez, who were murdered by their own children.
