As General Hospital’s Michael Is Caught In the Crossfire, Chad Duell Opens Up About His Struggle to Keep His Cool

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When we found out that Chad Duell would be exiting General Hospital and Michael leaving with him, we never imagined that Sonny’s eldest would be going out in a bomb explosion. Then again, maybe we should have, seeing as how little brother Morgan died in much the same way! Michael, of course, may still live to return again someday, but for now, Duell and his character are both wrapping up at General Hospital.

So when his TV dad Maurice Benard invited Duell onto his State of Mind vlog, we knew we had to tune in for one last talk with the talented young actor. And while they didn’t get into Duell’s reasons for stepping away from the ABC sudser he’s called home for nearly 15 years, they did touch on a lot of mental health issues, from Duell’s struggle with ADHD to how he deals with anger.

When Benard asked how he was as a kid, Duell admitted he had something of a short fuse. “I would go to the principal’s office for hurting kids all the time,” he acknowledged. “But also, I had two older brothers — my temper would go [snap] really quick. I’d get angry really fast because I had two brothers who always kind of teased and picked on me. So you had to learn to fend for yourself.”

Duell didn’t go out of his way to hurt or bully or act maliciously, but he had a hard time keeping his negative emotions tamped down as things happened. “It would not be trying to hurt somebody, but like if I got upset in the playground or someone did something when playing a game or cheated, yeah. I’d be like, ‘What the heck?!’ Knock him over or something like that in the moment.”

And that’s kind of how Michael is on General Hospital. He doesn’t live the mob life (well, mostly) and he doesn’t go looking for trouble. But just like how he teamed up with Curtis to steal Aurora away from Drew, he can be pushed to the point of snapping. And Michael has the means to make sure that his fighting back really hurts.

Nowadays, of course, Duell doesn’t react that way with people. “I don’t go tripping people in life now. When I was a kid, I had a little bit of a short fuse. Now I do, but usually I take it out on technology. I don’t take it out on people. Like if I’m playing a game and I’m losing, I might smash it like, ‘Oh, come one!’” He smiled ruefully adding, “That’s very unattractive, I’m very well aware.”

At that point, Benard asked about how he reacts when driving, as that tends to bring out anger in a whole lot of us. “I need to work on that,” Duell admitted. “That’s something I’ve got to work on. The other thing, too, is when you’re driving and you’re yelling at other people, or you’re reacting off of somebody doing something — they flick you off and then you let it ruin your day. It’s weird, like their poison enters your body. That takes training of just shutting that off.”

After Benard shared a story of being confronted by some scary folks who had road rage, Duell acknowledged that he never had road rage to the point of getting out of the car, but, “I’ve gone up to a woman that rolled her window down and was yelling at a girlfriend at the, calling her a [bleep] and stuff. I got out and I talked to her and I just kind of berated her a little bit vocally. I wasn’t being mean.”

“I never try to start [anything],” he concluded. “Make peace more than fights. But sometimes I get a little pushed.”

That’s something we can probably all understand a bit. But as time goes on, we learn to deal with these things better and peace, hopefully, wins out more often than not.