2024 marks a decade since actor Van Hansis came out as gay in 2014. The actor is slated to replace Ryan Carnes as Lucas Jones on General Hospital.
To daytime TV enthusiasts, Van Hansis is a fixture in our screens. Born Evan Vanfossen Hansis on September 25, 1981, in North Adams, Massachusetts, he later moved to Greenfield in third grade when his mother became a principal. Even as a child, Hansis knew he wanted to be an actor, so he attended theater camp and started to hone his art there.
The 43-year-old actor is most notable for his role as Luke Snyder in the long-time running CBS soap opera As the World Turns where he was a cast member from 2005 until the show ended in 2010. At the time, the character Hansis played was gay, and together with Noah Mayer (Jake Silbermann), their pairing was hailed as the “first gay supercouple in American soap opera history.” His pairing with Silbermann was the “first gay kiss” in the show’s history and was so popular that their kiss was viewed over 2 million times on YouTube when the scene was first uploaded on the video sharing platform. For his role as Luke, Hansis was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award thrice–truly incredible.
If you’re wondering if he’s single, unfortunately, he’s not. Hansis has been with his partner Tyler Hanes since 2007. The two became friends while Hansis was studying in Carnegie Mellon University. At the time, Hansis was taking up a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting from the School of Drama. Years later, it wasn’t until a serendipitous encounter at a Broadway opening night, the two finally started things romantically.
Rounding up his Daytime Emmy Award nominations to four is his role in the hit LGBT series Eastsiders. The actor has been out since he was sixteen, but it wasn’t until an interview with his Eastsiders cast mates for The Fight Mag that he came out publicly. At the time, he was still afraid of being type-casted for gay roles:
“It was a combination of a lot of things—It was my first job, it was a different time back then in regards to LGBT stories being told—I mean, the Luke story was groundbreaking at the time. Now, I think every remaining soap has a gay storyline. I was completely green, fresh out of college, and honestly, I was scared.”
General Hospital has been around since 1963 and has been awarded by the Guinness Book of World Records as the “Longest Running American Soap Opera in Production.” The show welcomed Hansis after it recasted Ryan Carnes. Hansis will be playing Lucas Jones, who has been a character on the show since 1989, has been played by multiple actors, and who identifies as gay. Hansis seems grounded and thankful about his latest role and had this to say about his soap opera comeback:
“I’m really grateful. I’ve been in this industry long enough that I know there are no guarantees, but I didn’t know if I’d ever be back on a soap. But now that I am, I’m super excited to be here. I’m really just making sure that I’m taking it in and enjoying being a part of something really, really cool.”
Since his As the World Turns days, Hansis has seen a vast improvement in representation. He tells TV Insider that it feels great to have gay characters on General Hospital and not have it be a plot line, and instead, to have it represented casually:
“I love that Lucas is not the only gay character on the show. I remember when Luke and Noah kissed [on ATWT] for the first time, we had Entertainment Tonight come. And I get it, but it’s great that we’re in a place where it’s so casual, just like how it is in life. There are gay people in life so there should be gay people on soaps and queer people and trans people and all of that. So, the fact that it’s so ingrained and it’s not like ‘the gay character’ or ‘the gay storyline’ feels really nice.”
The actor will be making his return to daytime television on General Hospital starting on October 4. You can catch General Hospital on ABC, weekdays.
Sources: Broadway World, TV Insider