ATWT's Van Hansis Is the New Lucas on GH!

A familiar face is coming to Port Charles! Well, familiar if you happened to watch CBS Daytime, anyway! General Hospital is recasting the role of Lucas with As the World Turns alum Van Hansis !

The soap has announced that Hansis will first appear in the episode scheduled to air on Friday, Oct. 4, though as always, with preemptions, that is subject to change. CBS fans remember the actor well from his 2005-10 run as Luke Snyder on ATWT, which earned him three consecutive Daytime Emmy Award nominations. Since the CBS sudser came to an end in 2010, the actor starred as Thom in the streaming drama Eastsiders and made appearances in series like The Mentalist and FBI as well as movies like First Reformed and Murder Manual.

“This is the first soap I’ve done since ATWT and it moves incredibly quickly,” Hansis admitted to TV Insider . “On ATWT, we would shoot a full episode a day usually, and the way we shoot here is that there might be three or four episodes shooting in one working day, just depending on what sets are available.”

The character of Lucas Jones was first played by a series of child actors before Evan Bonifant stepped into the role in 2002 for a brief run before being replaced by C.J. Thomason. Ryan Carnes took over in 2004, but exited in 2005 to be replaced by Ben Hogestyn, who remained until 2006. Carnes reprised the role in 2014, but in 2020, Matt Trudeau stepped in for some appearances. The last time Lucas was seen on screen was in January 2024 when he attended Bobbie’s funeral.

As Hansis gets to know his new GH family, he has enjoyed reconnecting with one of his former ATWT co-stars, Maura West (Ava), who used to play Carly and is now playing Lucas’ aunt. “She didn’t know I got cast and I was coming out of a wardrobe fitting and she was grabbing her wardrobe for the day. This was the day that we had scenes together and she just looked at me and it was like she saw a ghost. She was like, ‘Van?’ And she gave me a big hug and then she was like, ‘Wait, are you Lucas?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah,’ and she screamed so loudly that the security guard came down to see because they thought somebody was getting hurt or something.”

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