General Hospital's Steve Burton reveals the co-star who helped bring Jason Morgan to life

Steve Burton was at a crossroads before General Hospital turned Jason Quartermaine into Jason Morgan.

Steve Burton joined the cast of General Hospital in 1991 as Jason Quartermaine, son of Alan Quartermaine and adoptive son of Monica Quartermaine. Jason was also their golden child at the time, as older son A.J. was more of a screw-up who eventually became an alcoholic.

That alcoholism is what led to the fateful 1995 car crash that resulted in Jason Q waking up with brain damage and no memory of his previous life. He eventually adopted the last name Morgan for his grandmother Lila's maiden name, but it was one of Burton's co-stars who spoke up and helped give him a new character to play.

Burton discussed that time in the mid-1990s with Maurice Benard when he appeared on the podcast State of Mind with Maurice Benard on June 2. Burton was only 25 years old at the time and still considered himself a bit green when Benard noticed Burton's work and started taking him under Benard's wing.

Benard explained that he and Burton had never really talked before, but he spotted the younger actor doing a scene on the monitor.

"I saw Steve on the phone," Benard said. "And something hit me to say to myself, 'This guy's deep. What are they doing? He's deep.'"

The two actors then relayed that Benard approached Burton to talk about what his plans were because Burton was about to leave the soap at the end of his first three-year contract. Benard also wanted to know why Jason was mainly doing things like "pouring coffee for Lila" rather than more meaty material.

However, it wasn't Benard who advocated for Burton to do more on GH. Instead, it was his on-screen dad who talked to the writers and producers and helped convince them to give Burton more challenging work, which resulted in him staying with the soap for decades.

"Stuart Damon [Alan Quartermaine] was a huge advocate for me. He would always go up [to producers] and say, 'Hey, give this guy something. He's good. He's got something,'" Burton told Benard. "I believe it was Elizabeth Korte who is now our head writer, and I believe, it was something between her and [former head writer] Bob Guza. I don't know whose idea it was, but what happened was, you and I were starting to work together a lot off-camera as Jason Quartermaine, still. We were breaking down my scripts. Then, they made a decision to change my character and have me work with you."

And the rest, as they say, is history. Jason Q tried to stop his brother from driving drunk, resulting in Jason Morgan, a character who would go on to become Sonny Corinthos' best friend and right-hand mob man for the next (almost) 30 years.

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