General Hospital shocked fans recently when the FBI agent Anna Devane was up against turned out to be Jagger Cates, the former PC rebel with a cause who became a cop before leaving town in the 1990s.
Adam Harrington Is PC’s Latest Federal Agent
While Jagger briefly appeared on the GH spinoff series Night Shift, we hadn’t heard from him in years. Formerly played by Antonio Sabato Jr, Jagger was married to Scott Baldwin’s son Karen and was the brother to Robin Scorpio’s first love, Stone Cates.
The character is now played by soap newcomer Adam Harrington. The actor has had a prolific primetime career doing episodic work, but this is his first foray into daytime. However, when he first landed the role, he had no idea he would be playing such an iconic character.
Harrington Has Big Shoes To Fill
“I had met [Casting Director] Mark Teschner in October [2023] for another role,” Harrington told Soap Opera Digest. “And they said, ‘It’s not gonna be yours, but hold on, we have something else in mind.’ When I went in for that, it was straight to a chemistry read with Laura Wright [Carly]. They let me know fairly quickly that that it wasn’t going to go my way, but to hold tight. And then they called again and they, “We’d love to have you on the show,” and then they let me know who I was playing. So, I kind of got hired, and then I found out I was playing John.”
Yes, Jagger goes by his real name John now, and we have a feeling the role he originally went for was Brennan, the WSB director who is now in Pentonville.
When Harrington learned his character had a history with the show, he went back and watched old Jagger clips to prepare. He quickly realized he looked nothing like the original Jagger.
“My take on it was that it’s been 30 years,” he said. “They obviously wanted to take this in a new direction and see what they could do with this storyline. And I also thought, “There is no way I can even touch what Antonio Sabato, Jr. did with the role in the past.” Although I know it would be jarring for fans, in some ways, I was very happy that I didn’t look like I was going to try to mimic or echo at all what they had done with that storyline.”
Tune into General Hospital weekdays on ABC to see how these stories play out.