Maurice Benard, Wife Paula gh sonny jj
Credit: Image: Jill Johnson/JPI

The real-life supercouple got candid on camera.

Just days after General Hospital icon Maurice Benard (Sonny) and wife Paula celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary — they’ve been together for an additional five years — she joined her husband in his latest State of Mind video to discuss what it’s like being hitched to someone who’s bipolar. “Yeah, I didn’t sign up for it,” she cracked. “Maybe now’s the time to tell you.”

Kidding aside, Mrs. Benard said that “it’s no different than living with anyone with any other problem… I mean, yes, it’s difficult, but you know… I don’t know. I don’t think twice about it.

“I just do whatever we have to do to manage it,” she continued. “When times are hard, then we dig deeper and figure out what we need to do. But to me, it’s almost a question that shouldn’t even be asked.” 

Her devotion certainly came in handy some 27 years ago, when Benard had his third nervous breakdown shortly after joining the cast of General Hospital. “I had not been taking my medication for two years,” he recalled. “And something was wrong. I quit the show after three weeks… ”

“To be a priest!” Paula reminded him. Yep, “I wanted to take my shoes off and preach to the whole country,” the Emmy winner admitted. “I threatened your life one night, which I’m not proud of. But you actually said on Oprah that it wasn’t me. What did you mean by that?”

What Paula meant was that her husband, the man she loved, wasn’t present in that moment. “When you were saying it just now, saying ‘I threatened your life,’ inside of me I wanted to say, ‘Well, you didn’t threaten my life,’” she shared. “I just got super emotional… I know that something has almost in a way possessed your state of mind [in such an instance], and it’s just a matter of getting through whatever that issue is… The right medication takes those terrible thoughts out of your head.”

Benard was curious. Did he look different at a time like that? “You’re the same person,” his missus replied, “but inside your eyes? Deep in your soul, it’s not you.

“It’s scary. It’s very scary,” she added, “because I know we’ve talked about you saying you would never have done anything, and I’m sitting there saying I’m looking at you and I didn’t know that you wouldn’t do anything.”

Having dealt with her husband’s condition for so long, Paula knows that 100 percent of the time, he gets better. And that’s a message both of them hoped too impart to anyone watching. “It may take a while, but eventually, if you do the right things, you get through it,” Benard said. “You’ll see that light at the end of the tunnel.”

To watch their full conversation, press PLAY on the video above. Then check out the photo gallery below that reviews some of the trials Benard has faced on screen as Sonny.