General Hospital's Rory Gibson weighs in on real-life friendship with Cameron Mathison

On General Hospital, Michael Corinthos and Drew Cain are nephew and uncle. They used to be close friends and business partners, but are now bitter rivals as Michael is part of the legion of Port Charles citizens who have an ax to grind with the corrupt Congressman.

In the past year, Drew has stolen Michael’s wife, Willow Tait (Katelyn MacMullen), and is now trying any number of underhanded tricks to get Willow full custody of her children with Michael, Wiley, and Amelia.

Drew and Michael are at each other's throats on General Hospital

Drew, assuming Sonny bribed the judge in Michael's custody case, threatened his nephew about it | Image: ABC

Drew’s latest plan involves the million dollars given to the judge who gave Michael full custody of the children. Drew assumes that Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard) paid off the judge, and on the August 28th episode, Drew tried to blackmail Michael into giving Willow custody of the children to keep him from revealing that. Neither Drew nor Michael knows yet that Jenz Sidwell (Carlo Rota) was the real source of the bribery money.

Drew and Michael had a tense standoff in Michael’s office at Aurora Media over this, and Michael sent Drew away without giving in to his demands.

Like many General Hospital characters in Port Charles, Michael hates Drew now and may want to kill him. But in real life, their portrayers, Rory Gibson (Michael) and Cameron Mathison (Drew), are buddies. Gibson weighed in on their partnership in a Soap Opera Digest interview this week.

“It’s basically just me and him death-staring at each other the whole time and seeing who’s going to blink first and trying so desperate, desperately not to blink,” Gibson said. “But then, the second the cameras are off, he’s just such a nice, cool guy. He’s such a good conversationalist; he’s so personable, he’s so friendly. He’s just a great dude – a great dude that does a really, really good job at playing a not-great dude!”

Gibson had similar things to say about MacMullen, who plays Michael’s ex-wife, Willow Tait. Since Gibson took over the role in May, Michael’s relationship with Willow has been nothing but conflict. They have been battling for custody of Wiley and Amelia from the moment Gibson walked into the Nurses’ Ball and took Wiley (Viron Weaver) home. They have argued about her relationship with Drew, and Michael has figured out that Willow was the person gaslighting Sasha (Sofia Mattsson), causing her to leave town with Michael’s newborn daughter, Daisy.

Gibson wasn’t playing Michael when he and Willow had a happy marriage on General Hospital, but he clearly gets along with MacMullen. They have occasionally posted fun behind-the-scenes shots on their Instagram accounts.