This article appeared in Soap Opera Weekly on November 16, 1993.

Bye Bye, Bill
by Linda Susman

Since his ship docked in General Hospital's Port Charles in February 1991, Bill Eckert has veered far from the course viewers were led to expect. The man we were introduced to then was a seaman who wore flannel shirts and jeans, coped with unemployment, lack of funds, a pesky ex-wife, the needs of a young son and the tentative stirrings of rekindled romance. He seemed pretty comfortable sitting at the kitchen table with his close-knit working-class family. But in rather short order, GH traded in Bill's blue collar for a white one--with all the trappings. There was an incredibly rapid ascent into the berth of Port Charles power brokers, a succession of unsuccessful romances, and he developed an increasingly cavalier attitude toward his son, his family and his friends. Some people began to speculate that once GH knew Luke Spencer would be returning to the show the writers purposely trashed Bill, so that by the time he left, not only wouldn't viewers miss him they'd actually be happy to see him go.

Anthony Geary isn't one of those people who believes that. In an exclusive conversation with Soap Opera Weekly's executive editor, Linda Susman, just after taping his final scenes as Bill (which air Monday, Nov. 15), Geary provides insight into the character, and offers eloquent defense on his behalf. Bill's departure is an ironic twist, and one that will make soap opera history.

Linda Susman: There were so many starts and stops and turns in the development and progression of Bill Eckert, who ultimately became an awful person. Some of the interplay, particularly with Sly, was painful to watch. I could not equate that with the Bill we first met who was an extremely loving and devoted father.

Anthony Geary: Well, I saw him as an extremely loving and devoted father throughout, but I saw the conditions of his life change and the way he reacted and showed his love was not the same as it had started. So if we can accept the premise that he was not an awful person, but that he was a human being who went wrong somewhere, then I think we can start with what (then-executive producer) Gloria (Monty) intended.

I was not originally set to play Bill Eckert. Nobody was. When I first agreed to come back to GH, Gloria assumed it would only be for six months, and she wanted me to play Harlan Barrett. I said there was no point to doing that, that if I was coming back it wasn't to do a guest shot, and Harlan was not to be a long-range role. So once the decision was made for me to sign for a year, rather than adjust the story, Gloria decided to scuttle the Harlan Barrett idea, so I became Bill Eckert sort of by default.

I have often thought Bill may have worked with another actor in a way that would have been more pleasing to the audience. Initially what they wanted Bill to be was a great father, a great son, a great brother--pretty much the ideal kind of fella--and that has never been very interesting to me to play. There are a lot of guys who can do that really, really well, I think, and I'm not one of them.

From day one I was always looking for the dark side of Bill--where's the pain in his life, what is his fatal flaw, what are his disappointments--which is the way I look at all characters. I was fighting the writing the whole time and also bucking the idea that once we settled into it being sort of this public farce of this retro family, a family that was far more 1960s or late '50s than it was early '90s, which was the way it had been presented to me: a blue-collar family struggling with the realities of blue-collar life. It developed into some kind of unbelievable situation. I kept calling it "retro family"--Donna Reed. It was very, very difficult for me to stomach, frankly. And it did not catch on with the audience. Perhaps some other actor could have fit into the family better than I, because I was always looking for what was wrong with the family, not what was right with it.

LS: Do you think the crucial turn was Bill getting money?

AG: That was a rather desperate decision made early on when they decided I looked better in Armani suits than in jeans. The next thing you know, Bill has $60 million, and that certainly had a major impact on him. He became much more focused on material things from then on. His relationship with Julia Barrett was all materially based. That whole romance, which was one of the stages of his development, had a lot to do with power and money and prestige. I think the money was liberating for Bill, because in my mind the wholesome thing was an act. I believed from the beginning, in my head, that the Eckerts weren't what they appeared. I decided that the father, who died in the second year of the story, had been a closet wife-beater, and that our mother often served us breakfast in the morning with a black eye but utterly denied that anything had gone wrong.

That's the only thing that made sense as to why these people were so cardboard. They were all in denial; and so Bill, as he became rich and no longer needed to hide, became determined that he would not lie, that he would not smile if he didn't feel like smiling, or tell people everything was fine if it wasn't. So there was another show going on in my head, which is why Bill Eckert was never quite what he seemed. Here was a man who was living in quiet desperation. Just because a guy doesn't tell you what he's feeling doesn't mean he doesn't have feelings. He had deep feelings, and they were trapped.

LS: I thought we were going to learn something shocking and enlightening early in the storyline the day Bill was watching a report on TV in Carol's apartment about POWs, and had such an enormous reaction to what came on the screen.

AG: That's exactly the point when we should have started to learn, because I looked at that day as cracking open the mask. I had literally begged the producer and the writers to give Bill a past of something I could work with that was haunting or disappointing--something to flesh this man out. I suggested piracy because I had been reading a lot about modern-day pirates, so I'll take the fall on that one. A lot of people hated the idea that he was a pirate, but I hoped it might lead us down a road that would make him more interesting, and someone who could live a little closer to the edge. So that day was a profound one for Bill Eckert. The face in the mirror cracked, and what we found out about him is that there were some very deep wounds--mental, physical and emotional--from his past that involved torture. That, to me, meant the man was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and I thought it would be a fascinating thing to play and certainly something the writers would be interested in exploring. They weren't, and we went on as if nothing happened. But I didn't. I started letting that day reverberate through Bill Eckert, and that, indeed, was the beginning of the end of the nice guy you found so comforting, because I did not want him to be a comfortable sofa of a character. That was a conflict that was ongoing. It seemed the more I wanted to look into the dark side of Bill, the more uninterested the crowd became. I could not become the perfect single dad from thirtysomething who takes his kid to the ballgame every night and tries to date a woman.

But I must say, he never stopped loving Sly--never--which you will see very clearly. Interestingly, I have found that a lot more men liked him than women, and I think that while he may have been a liar with Holly, for example, and was not the pleasantest of guys, there was a straightforwardness about him. He sort of cut through the [crap] attitude that men respond to in this medium; women are not comforted by that kind of man, in general.

It's a difficult call because there aren't many guys on the air who are brutally, ruthlessly straightforward, and I also refused to make him sentimental, which is something I struggle with with Luke, too. Sentiment is great, but sentimentality is cheap. I don't think anybody around GH will miss Bill much, but what I find disturbing is this: What are the facts that make Bill such an awful person? Is it that he's so ruthlessly honest and unsentimental? Or is it that he's a bad dad? If he's a bad dad because he's absent, why is Paul Hornsby not a bad dad? He never sees his little girl. Why are other people not bad? It's only because the writers decided to tell the audience by having everybody in town judge Bill's behavior that he was a bad dad. You never really saw Bill be a bad dad. You just heard about it. What would have solved that was when Bill came back to town after his trips, we could have investigated how much he missed his son. Instead, we got the same old stuff where Sly whined and complained to everyone in town that his dad was never home.

I don't believe he ever stopped loving Sly. What makes sense to me was the fact that every woman Bill came into contact with in 2 1/2 years--including his mother, his sister, his ex-wife, Julia Barrett, even Holly in the end--used Sly to get to Bill, and to have not known that makes him an idiot. Any man has his antennae out for that. What would have been wonderful, I think, was these two men--a man who treats his child like a man--living together in the lighthouse, taking care of each other in a straightforward, manly way. What the child provides for the man is humanity and what the man provides for the child is safety and security; they take care of each other, and any woman coming into that dynamic would have to deal with both of them. Why couldn't we have that story?

LS: There are people who believe the idea was to make Bill unlikable, to pave the way for his departure and Luke's return.

AG: That certainly wasn't my intention. I still don't think Bill is a character who shouldn't be respected. I think he is a character with a lot of integrity. There are scenes coming up with Bill and Sly that are definitive and which might help heal the audience's wound a little bit. Claire Labine (the show's new head writer) decided she liked Bill and has written a wonderful send-off. I think that even if we hadn't decided to do Luke I would have left because there wasn't any interest in Bill, except on my part. I'm very proud that he's a very different man than Luke Spencer. When I first started he was referred to as "Bluke," because people could not get the difference. I don't think that happens anymore, because he's been clearly delineated. I think that will be even clearer when you see the two men on-screen together.