RICKY MIDDLESWORTH/ABC
With the latest developments surrounding the character Lulu and General Hospital‘s not-so-secret plans to bring the character back in the form of a recast, it seems there will soon be turmoil in the relative domestic calm that Sam and Dante have enjoyed. Dominic Zamprogna, who plays Dante, is looking forward to the drama but has become a huge fan of the ‘Sante’ couple. “I like everything about it,” he says. “It’s revealed different sides of him and shown new things about Dante. Speaking to Kelly (Monaco, Sam), we talked about how it really shows different sides of both of them, together and apart.”
Go forward, look back
Dante and Lulu’s relationship began shortly after Zamprogna first joined the series in 2009, and the character – played first by Julie Marie Berman and then by Emme Rylan – was the actor’s only significant romantic interest during his first long stint on the show. So the actor had little experience playing a Dante who wasn’t in a relationship with Lulu when she fell into a coma in 2020. He muses, “It was interesting to see who he was without her, because you saw who he was before her, but then he spent so much time with her and it felt like he was losing his own identity a little bit.”
It was refreshing for the actor when he began working more closely with Monaco. “With Sam and Dante, there wasn’t that dependence on each other that Dante and Lulu seemed to have all the time at the end,” Zamprogna notes. “Being back on the show (since its return in 2020) and working with someone else brings out different things in the characters and we brought out different things in each other (as actors). That’s what I liked about it. And Kelly is fiery and fierce and always fun to work with.”
As a bonus, Zamprogna was able to explore what he calls the “blended family aspect” of Sam and Dante’s relationship, as both characters have children from previous relationships (Rocco with Lulu for him, Danny with Jason and Scout with Drew for her). “The moments where we were able to play that blended family element were so interesting; it’s interesting to play the father of a child that isn’t your own son. So, the whole thing was great.”
