After ‘Hospital’ Stay, Jack Wagner Finds New Home in ‘Santa Barbara’

Daytime TV viewers looking for Jack Wagner, who last month left his popular role as police detective-rock singer Frisco Jones on ABC’s “General Hospital,” need only to turn the dial. Beginning Monday, the actor joins the cast of NBC’s “Santa Barbara,” which airs opposite “GH.” On his new soap, Wagner plays the Lockridge family’s prodigal son Warren, a journalist-photographer returning home after years abroad.

After his success on “GH,” where he received an Emmy nomination and several daytime TV magazine reader awards, why jump ship to the competition?

“My contract was up at ABC, and NBC contacted me with a nice offer and incentives that ABC had not,” Wagner says. “I’d been on ‘General Hospital’ 5 1/2 years, and it was getting rather stagnant. Frisco was pretty staid the last few years--he was married, had the responsibility of a child and a job with the police force. Warren is more independent. He’s not the predictable hero, but an Ernest Hemingway type--flamboyant, ambitious, adventuresome. If he looked danger in the face, he’d spit at it.”

Odds are that all the adventure will leave no time for the singing that the 31-year-old Wagner did as Frisco. A real-life pop star, Wagner had a hit record in 1985, “All I Need,” recorded three albums for Quincy Jones’ Qwest label, and plans to release another album early next year.

When not in the TV or recording studio, Wagner is apt to be on the links: A former state golf champion in his native Missouri, he won this year’s AT&T; Pro-Am tournament and is the reigning club champion at the Bel-Air Country Club.

The actor may have left his professional “GH” ties behind, but not his personal ones. Actress Kristina Malandro, who plays Frisco’s wife, Felicia, is Wagner’s girlfriend and the mother of 10-month-old son Petey.

And how does Wagner feel his numerous “GH” fans will take to his new character, minus Felicia and with a brand-new look?

“Initially, it might be a little bit difficult for them to adjust,” he says. “But I give them credit for knowing this is just television, not real life.”