General Hospital is welcoming a new face to Port Charles. Alimi Ballard will make his debut as William Baines on Thursday, September 3, TV Insider can report exclusively.
Ballard is no stranger to daytime. He got his acting break in 1993 playing Frankie Hubbard on Loving, then transitioned in character to The City in 1995.
In an interview with Theatre Corner, Ballard looked back on his soap start, where he played the son of beloved supercouple Angie and Jesse Hubbard (Debbi Morgan and Darnell Williams).
“I got that job in August of 1993, my first, true on-camera series regular,” he said. “It was my first entry into being a real professional actor, the whole audition process.”
Darnell Williams, Debbi Morgan, Alimi Ballard – ‘The City’
Ann Limongello /© ABC / Courtesy Everett Collection
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Ballard credited Morgan with teaching him a lot about the business. “I got a chance to work along alongside one of the greatest actors I’ve ever seen lace up her boots — Debbi Morgan,” he added. “She is just as stunning in person as you would imagine, and she taught me everything I needed to know to get started as an artist — how to prepare you for the level of intensity, the level of dedication required to make these fictional circumstances connect with the audience and I would be in scenes with her sometimes and I would just be like, mouth open, because her range of emotion and a command and access to it would blow me away and I just I fashioned myself to try to come somewhere within the same area code of that level of professionalism and talent.”
After wrapping up his soap run in 1996, Ballard went on to find success in primetime, playing the Quizmaster in Sabrina the Teenage Witch and FBI agent David Sinclair on Numb3rs, and appeared in a slew of big hits, including Criminal Minds, Queen Sugar, Queen of the South, Law & Order and The Rookie.
But despite his long list of credits, Ballard also experienced the leaner years of an acting career. Looking back at the period between the 1998 film Deep Impact and shooting the pilot for Numb3rs in 2004, he recalled, “There was a period where you’re doing a bunch of guest stars,” he recalled. “Some months, you got money, some months you don’t. You’re scrounging, unemployment for six months…. You’re going to have to learn how to grind, how to pray, how to cry…. It’s easy to have passion and vigor and faith when things are going well … Who can get back up? This is the difference.”
Now, Ballard is getting another chance to experience the world of daytime, bringing more than three decades of acting experience back to the genre that gave him his start.
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