General Hospital stars address ‘super painful’ farewell of beloved co-star after soap legend’s death. General Hospital stars Steve Burton and Jane Elliot opened up about their on-screen farewell of Leslie Charleson’s character Monica Quartermaine after her real-life funeral.
It’s an emotional week for General Hospital fans — and it was an emotional one for its actors too when the episodes were first filmed. This week, fans are officially bidding farewell to Dr. Monica Quartermaine, some months after the actress behind the character, Leslie Charleson, also passed away aged 79 and had her own memorial services. The late actress joined General Hospital in 1977 when she took over the role of Monica from Patsy Rahn, and was the longest-tenured cast member on the show before her departure in 2023.
Steve Burton, whose character Jacob Morgan was raised by Monica, speaking with Soaps, opened up about what filming those emotional funeral scenes were like, just weeks after Leslie’s real-life farewell. “Obviously, it wasn’t easy for anybody,” he first said,” noting: “The psychological part of already going to Leslie’s celebration of life and kind of moving past that, then re-opening the whole thing again was super painful.”
Recalling the real memorial for Leslie, which was back in February, Steve shared: “I’m grateful for the time we had together, and I’ll say this: Going to her celebration of life? She touched so many people,” adding: “What I don’t think the public knew, and I certainly didn’t know the extent of it, was how many people she touched.”
He went on: “How many people showed up and got up and said, ‘She changed my life. It’s a huge testament to the character of that woman, and it was such a blessing to be able to play her son,” and as for the on-screen celebration of life, Steve maintained: “They’re giving her the proper tribute. What we want, what the fans want and what she deserves.”
Jane Elliot, who plays Tracy Quartermaine, Monica’s sister-in-law, also told Variety of filming the funeral scenes: “It was very, very difficult to play her alive when she had already passed in real life. It extended the mourning because we had to keep her alive when she wasn’t,” and emphasized: “I had to mourn her death twice.”
“Leslie left two voids in my life,” the actress, 78, further shared. “She left a void as an acting partner and a friend. Leslie and I knew each other for 60 years. We met in 1965. I was 18 and she was 20, and she was dating a boy in a play that I was in in New York City. She would come to the theater on Saturdays and hang out in my dressing room and wait for him to be done so that they could go out to dinner between shows. We would sit and gab, and she’d watch me put on my makeup. We had a lot of shared experience and stuff to talk about. And then we lost touch. And in 1978 I got hired to play Tracy [on General Hospital] only to discover that I was to play her sister-in-law.”
“She was an integral part of my life… It’s hard enough to mourn somebody’s death once, but then to do it again. One was obviously the person, and the other was the character, but at a certain point they blended. You know, Monica was Leslie, and Leslie was Monica. I had shared experience with Monica, and I had shared experience with Leslie, so she left me twice.”
Per People, Leslie died from “sequelae of blunt head trauma,” a condition caused by a previous head injury, though it’s unclear when she previously suffered head trauma. She was previously diagnosed with asthma, arthritis, atrial fibrillation, and normal pressure hydrocephalus, which per the Cleveland Clinic, is a condition that happens when cerebrospinal fluid builds up inside your skull and presses on your brain. The condition is most likely in people over 65, and it’s often treatable and sometimes even reversible.
