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Curtis Ashford had spent the last stretch on General Hospital close enough to Drew’s (Cameron Mathison) shooting to raise eyebrows, but never so close that the story tipped him fully into blame. Watching Curtis carry that weight without unraveling said a lot about how far the character has come, and when Donnell Turner talked about his own road to Port Charles, the parallel didn’t need spelling out — this was always a career built on waiting, showing up, and letting timing do its work.
The General Hospital star knew his path
Turner spoke with ABC 11 about a journey that never wandered as much as it appeared to from the outside, even when life forced him to take detours he didn’t plan. Growing up in Chicago, he assumed sports would be the door that eventually opened into acting, until a ruptured Achilles closed that chapter and pushed him toward the thing he’d already been watching for years.
“General Hospital was the show,” he said, tracing that early pull back to afternoons spent watching Luke Spencer (the late Anthony Geary) and nights laughing at John Ritter – two performances that made the job feel possible instead of distant.
In his early days, Turner started writing handwritten letters to GH casting director Mark Teschner, not because he had leverage but because he had conviction and not much else. He admitted he had little to offer beyond classes, a couple of music videos, and the vague encouragement of people telling him he looked like he belonged on daytime. But he tenaciously kept writing anyway, once a month, for nearly a year. It wasn’t a strategy so much as a stubborn belief in himself.
When the call finally came years later, it didn’t arrive cleanly or confidently. Turner described the stretch of waiting and uncertainty as humbling rather than dramatic. By the time Curtis Ashford became a reality, it felt earned, not granted, which shaped how Turner stepped into the role and stayed there.
Becoming part of the institution
Ten years in, Turner didn’t talk about GH like a gig you clock in and out of so much as a place that slowly takes hold if you stick around, where the same names keep turning up, and the history lives in the walls as much as the scripts. He kept circling back to how rare it is to work somewhere that doesn’t just recycle faces but actually lets people grow, watching crew members and cast move up, sideways, and deeper into the fabric of the show over time.
That feeling clicked in when he started working alongside people he’d grown up watching, not in a dramatic, capital-M Moment way, but in small flashes that caught him off guard: a familiar face across the set, a scene partner whose voice he already knew by heart. “It’s surreal. It's serendipitous. It's beyond what I expected,” he said.
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As for what comes next, Turner didn’t talk like someone itching to bolt or chasing the next thing before this one was finished. He talked like someone who knows the rhythm of the job now, who shows up, does the work in front of him, and trusts that the rest takes care of itself without being forced.
General Hospital can be seen weekdays on ABC and Hulu.
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