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“I’m very interested in the structure of soap operas,” the actor told ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” reflecting on his recent role on the daytime soap “General Hospital.”

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James was recently on ‘The View’ to talk about his guest stint on ‘General Hospital’. His interview can be seen below along with his “exit” interview.

Caps will be added shortly! In the mean time, here’s a few stills from ‘The View’ along with some new ‘General Hospital’ stills.

GALLERY LINKS:
- Appearances > 2010 > ABC’s “The View” – Season 13
- Television Series > 2009 | General Hospital > Production Stills
- Television Series > 2009 | General Hospital > Behind The Scenes

James Franco’s real life mother is pulling double duty these days – she’s also playing his mom on TV.This Friday (Jul. 2), author Betsy Franco will star on ABC’s General Hospital as part of James Franco’s returning storyline, playing his onscreen mom.

This marks Betsy’s first ever TV role and her first time acting alongside her famous son – one of her ultimate wishes.

Betsy, who’s been taking acting and sketch comedy classes at Stanford for the past six years, says James considered her for a role as his mom in one of his movies once before, but didn’t think she was “mean enough” for the part.

This time, however, she was ready to show her range, and prepared by running lines with James beforehand as an “ice breaker.”

Once the cameras started rolling, she was calm – and completely awestruck by her son’s commitment to the craft, which officially gave her the “acting bug.”

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The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), taped a special episode of ABC’s Emmy Award–winning daytime drama General Hospital on the occasion of the return of character Franco the artist, played by artist and actor James Franco, on the Pacific Design Plaza next to MOCA Pacific Design Center. Conceived by James Franco as part of a performance work titled SOAP at MOCA: James Franco on General Hospital, the taping was observed by a select live audience. This special episode will commence on ABC on Thursday, July 22, 3pm EST/2pm PST.

In this special episode, Franco, James Franco’s character from General Hospital, had an exhibition at MOCA Pacific Design Center, during which time Jeffrey Deitch, the new director of MOCA, and the characters from Port Charles from General Hospital made their West Coast debut. The character’s exhibition included full-scale models of the locations in which he encountered mobster Jason Morgan (Emmy winner Steve Burton). To the musical accompaniment of his artistic collaborator Kalup Dashinel, played by critically acclaimed video and performance artist Kalup Linzy, who performed live during the taping, Franco attempted to lure Jason and others into his art-trap. If all goes to plan, mastermind Franco will turn both Jason Morgan’s life and his own death into art, a performance to end all performances.

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TV Guide Magazine sat down with the star to find out why he’s such a show-biz nonconformist. 

TV Guide Magazine: I’m guessing that most of your movie-star pals would consider it ridiculous — if not downright suicidal — to take a role on a daytime soap. What makes you so different?
Franco: I’ve come to realize that maybe this is my only life, so I’m pursuing everything I’m interested in.

TV Guide Magazine: Still, you seem to find value in even the slimmest of experiences, like when you cameo’d as yourself in a game-show sketch on Saturday Night Live and didn’t have a single line of dialogue. You’ve done countless movies without a screen credit. You put your film career on hold to go back to college. You do not go with the flow.
Franco: I went back to school because I wanted to pursue writing. Rather than trying to do it solo, I needed to be around other serious writers. That’s why I go on SNL to try comedy, because those are some of the funniest people around. Why not work with the best?

TV Guide Magazine: Were you raised to be this open and experimental? Is it a Franco family trait?
Franco: My parents didn’t consciously infuse that kind of thing. But they met when they both were art majors at Stanford. My mother’s been an author of children’s books. She’s now a novelist for young adults. My grandmother and my uncle are art dealers. So I grew up around the art world and I’ve been branching out and trying new things since I was a teenager.

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James Franco makes his big return to General Hospital at the end of this month. But this time, he’s bringing backup. James’s mom, Betsy Franco, will show up playing — have you guessed? — Franco’s own mother.

OK, first of all: how adorable that James Franco got his mom a gig on GH? But also: how freaky of a mom would you have to be to raise a murderous psycho like our onscreen Franco? We’re predicting a lot of scarves.

Look for Betsy to make her Port Charles debut in early July.

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James Franco is returning to General Hospital!

The 32-year-old actor, who played Franco during a stint on the show last fall, will return next month for a “wild ride of mystery, music, murder and mayhem”. James‘ first airdate back is Wednesday, June 30!

“We are so thrilled to welcome James back to General Hospital,” Executive Producer Jill Farren Phelps said in a statement. “We had such a great time with him and are very excited that he decided to return to Port Charles to take care of unfinished business.”

“Working on General Hospital was a great experience,” James said in a statement. “I love the cast, writers, directors and producers. They have become a new family for me. I can’t wait for the work we will do this summer.”

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Something a bit different from the Sundance Film Festival. James talks about his stint on General Hospital.

For months we’ve obsessed over the reasons behind James Franco’s bizarre-but-fascinating decision to join the cast of General Hospital as a murderous artist named Franco. So when we ran into the coy actor Monday night at a Cinema Society screening of his Sundance-bound Allen Ginsberg biopic, Howl, we asked for — nay, demanded! — a straightforward explanation for his soap-opera move. And he finally gave it to us.

The idea came to him while preparing a second movie with the artist Carter. The new film (which will also feature Catherine Keener) is called Maladies, and Franco plays a former soap star. “Now, just because I’m playing a character who was formerly on a soap opera doesn’t mean I had to go on a soap opera, right?” said Franco. “So going on General Hospital isn’t directly related to Maladies. But we got to talking, like, ‘Hey, what if I really did a soap opera? That would be kind of amazing!’”

It turns out Franco has been a soap fan for a long time. “I was home sick a lot because I didn’t like school when I was little,” he said. “So if I wasn’t watching my VHS copy of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, or Whoopi Goldberg’s movie Jumping Jack Flash — because those were the only two movies we had the foresight to record — I guess I was watching soap operas.” So he called up the folks at General Hospital, who were, of course, ecstatic. He only gave them one bit of direction: “I said, ‘I want to play an artist, and I want him to be crazy.’ And they wrote this character that was better than I could have ever asked for. It was their idea to call the character Franco. I said, ‘That’s crazy. Thank you.’” It was only after he’d signed up that he decided to bring his own crew along to film the filming, he said, “because I wanted to really have ownership over the piece.” (This footage would be part of his yet-to-be-confirmed performance-art show at Deitch Projects’ Long Island City space this spring. And, in true meta form, that show might in turn be taped for a special episode of General Hospital.)

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Thanks to Rachel for the heads up on these! Here’s several more stills and behind the scenes images of James on General Hospital.

GALLERY LINKS:
- Television Series > 2009 | General Hospital > Behind The Scenes
- Television Series > 2009 | General Hospital > Production Stills

Also, here’s a video of James speaking about his character and General Hospital.