Recently, Marcus Coloma (ex-Nikolas Cassadine) talked to Soaps.com to discuss his sudden exit from General Hospital and the real reason that he was unable to film his final scenes as the dark prince of Spoon Island.
Coloma began his run as the back-from-the-dead Cassadine prince in October 2019 on Halloween night. At the time, it was believed that Valentin Cassadine (James Patrick Stuart) had killed his nephew during a 2016 hostage situation in a cold-blooded move to lay claim to the Cassadine empire. Coloma's time as Nikolas had been a particularly troubling period for the character. Nikolas' relationship with his son Spencer Cassadine (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) had been strained to the point of broken because of Spencer's animosity toward his stepmother, Ava Jerome (Maura West), and his resentment that Nikolas had chosen Ava over his own son. Things only got worse when Nikolas kidnapped Spencer's ex-girlfriend Esme Prince (Avery Kristen Pohl) who was pregnant with Nikolas' child from an illicit one-night tryst, and he threatened to snatch Ava's young daughter out of her bed and disappear.
According to Coloma, complications from COVID kept him from filming his final scenes and led to the decision for Adam Huss to fill in at the last minute. Huss had stepped in for Coloma in the past, including when Coloma had to isolate after being exposed to COVID and again when Coloma had been diagnosed with the virus.
At the time of Coloma's exit, there had been rumors that the actor had refused to film his last scenes because he'd been upset at being let go. However, Coloma was clear that it was his health that prevented him from filming. Coloma explained that his initial bout of COVID hadn't been an issue. In fact, it had been so mild that he hadn't lost his sense of taste or smell, and the early symptoms vanished in a couple of days. It was the lasting effects of the virus that were difficult to recover from because he'd been plagued with brain fog and fatigue. The actor revealed that he had even reached a point where he hadn't been able to memorize his lines.
Luckily, those symptoms have since faded away, but Coloma confessed that it had been a struggle for him until recently. "I'm really back to 100 percent, and I'm exercising again," he shared. However, he was surprised at how long the symptoms lingered until he felt fully recovered. "I think it's just the thing that has to run its course, and it just takes a while for the body to figure it out," Coloma said.
Coloma admits that he had mixed feelings about his final scenes as Nikolas. "It was disappointing because I don't feel like I got to wrap up," he said. He likened it to working on a puzzle for a while but letting someone else finish it. Despite how it ended, Coloma didn't have any hard feelings because he recognized that daytime is a fast-moving industry and the actors are required to memorize pages of lines virtually overnight, so anything that slowed it down could be detrimental to the show.
"General Hospital is a well-run machine and the demand is so high, so if you're the person who is dropping the ball, it really holds the entire group up because that delay has a ripple effect," Coloma explains. He acknowledged that it was disappointing not to usher Nikolas off canvas, but Coloma felt it was in everyone's best interest, including the fans, for him to step back when he did.
Coloma admitted that it wasn't easy, but the show had to go on.
Did GH make the right decision to have Adam Huss usher Nikolas off canvas when Marcus Coloma wasn't able to? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.
