Exclusive: GH's Giovanni Mazza On His Fast Friendship With Tabyana Ali

GENERALHOSPITAL/X (formerly Twitter)

The Start Of A Beautiful Friendship: Giovanni Mazza (Gio) hit it off immediately with Tabyana Ali (Trina).

Even before General Hospital' s Giovanni Mazza (Gio) began working with his new Port Charles estate-mate, Tabyana Ali (Trina), the actor became a huge fan of the actress.

Instant Rapport

Mazza shares with Digest that "the weekend before I started filming with her, I reached out to her. Because I had watched the show [over the course of his audition process], I knew who Trina was, and that Tabyana, obviously, played her. So when I reached out, I said, 'Hey, Tabyana, I'm the new Gio on the show,' and I asked her if she wanted to hang out. She said, 'Yeah!' And so we planned to just get coffee and that would be it." But the conversation flowed so well, he reports, "that she was like, 'Do you want to go into the mall and kind of just walk around?' I was like, 'Sure!' So we walked around for like an hour, and then after that, we were like, 'Do you want to, like, go get some food or something?' We were like, 'Yeah, sure why not!' "

Their plans for a quick bite didn't quite pan out. "We ended up spending like six hours together and we just clicked," Mazza grins. "And we also ran over our lines [in preparation for our scenes]. So, then, when I was actually on set working with her, it just felt like I had known her my whole life, almost!"

While Gio and Trina's friendship is still in its infancy, Gio did begin to win her over right away by impressing her with his violin-playing prowess, and actor/violinist Mazza is happy anytime he gets to incorporate his real-life musicianship into his scenes. He describes the pieces he plays within the world of Port Charles as "a collaboration between the writers, the musical director and me. Our musical director, Paul Glass, has been so great, and he told me that if I want to play what the writers [scripted], I can, or if I want to play something else, I can totally do that. He's been super-cool about everything and I would love to play even more."