A Soap Star Died This Week

The loss of General Hospital’s talented Tyler Christopher

Steffany Ritchie
5 min readNov 6, 2023
A mourning woman holds red carnations
Photo by Arina Krasnikova: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-holding-red-flowers-6907860/

We are understandably in collective shock and mourning over the tragic loss of Matthew Perry last week.

Sadly, a couple of days after his passing, it was announced another, lesser known luminary has passed: Tyler Christopher, star and originator of the character of Nikolas Cassadine on long running daytime soap General Hospital.

I haven’t lived in America or watched soap operas in many years, but for a time, I was gripped, and it was entirely down to the appearance of this actor and his character in 1996.

Before the Nikolas Cassadine era came along, I thought soaps were kind of boring. Sure, I would occasionally watch my mom’s soap All My Children with her (back then we taped them on the vcr, they were a treat to watch at the end of a hard day at work/school!). But soaps were for old people.

Then one summer day, I flicked over to a soap my Mom didn’t watch. General Hospital. G.H. was on at 3 p.m., not 1 p.m., so it immediately seemed a little more hip. Set in fictitious Port Charles, it revolved around (unsurprisingly) the goings on at a hospital. Well, sort of. I don’t actually remember them spending much more time at the hospital that they did in any other soap.

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Steffany Ritchie

Nicheless. American in Scotland. Publisher of "Cancer Sucks, So Let's Talk About it More"