General Hospital's Tabyana Ali and Giovanni Mazza's shoe-shopping spree

On-screen, General Hospital's Trina and Gio have become fast friends. Off-screen, Tabyana Ali and Giovanni Mazza have done the same. Both young performers admit to hitting it off right from the start.

General Hospital stars' first meeting

Before Ali and Mazza taped their first scenes, they met up outside work to get to know one another.

"We met up at a Starbucks and we were supposed to just have coffee or a cute little tea or whatever," Ali told Soap Opera Digest. "And then we ended up just kind of walking around through the mall. I forced him to go shoe-shopping with me and to look at clothes and I thought, he’s gonna be like, 'Ugh, this girl,' but he ended up enjoying it, I guess! And we ended up just kind of really connecting on that. And we talked about astrology, because I love astrology so much, and he let me psychoanalyze him through that and he said I was pretty spot-on with some of it."

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After their mall adventure, Ali and Mazza got to work, and Ali was amazed by what she saw.

"And then we studied and rehearsed, and that was my first time really getting to see him act a little bit, and right there, I knew he was really good and is somebody that takes his craft very seriously."

Mazza was also thrilled with how well he and Ali hit it off the first time they met, telling Digest, "It just felt like I had known her my whole life."

More than friends for Trina and Gio?

When Gio first arrived in Port Charles, he immediately became friends with both Trina and Josslyn with some fans wondering if Gio would date one of them. Since Josslyn is firmly back with Dex, that leaves a single Trina looking for love.

For now, it seems like Trina doesn't see Gio as anything but a friend—and one she couldn't wait to kick out of her apartment when Josslyn needed to vent. Will Trina give Gio a second look once she helps Josslyn solve her problems, or will he be relegated to the friend zone?

Catch all-new episodes of General Hospital weekdays on ABC and Hulu.