Roger Howarth will be adding another character to his resume as he will join Californification for its new season, Deadline reported Tuesday.

The Daytime Emmy winner, who currently plays the characters of Franco on General Hospital and Todd Manning on One Life To Live, will increase his work in the next few months. He will play the recurring character on the Showtime hit starring David Duchovny. His character will play a yoga teacher in the class of Karen (Natascha McElhone), Hank's (David Duchovny) longtime, on-again/off-again girlfriend and mother of his daughter.

Howarth's addition to the cast is one that will surprise fans who are still adjusting to seeing Howarth on their screens again. In March, Howarth and his co-stars Michael Easton and Kristen Alderson vacated their roles on GH because of a lawsuit filed against ABC by Prospect Park. The trio were originally featured on One Life To Live before its cancelation in 2011. The actors reprised their roles of Starr, Todd and John on GH but the executives at Prospect Park felt the characters were needed when OLTL returned to production as an online soap opera in April.

Howarth, Easton and Alderson returned to GH as new characters in May, but Howarth's new role caused controversy. He was now playing the villainous Franco who apparently raped Sam and killed others. Ron Carlivati, head writer of GH, explained the decision to recast the role once played by actor James Franco with the soap veteran.

"Roger played a pretty larger than life character when he played Todd so we wanted to still have that element to it. Someone with a dark, wicked sense of humor, but also someone who would make a big impact on the canvas," he told ABC Soaps In Depth in its June 10-24 issue.

Carlivati acknowledged the backlash recasting the role with Howarth generated. However, he was assured that Howarth was the man to play what some fans feel is an irredeemable character.

"It's not that I want people to hate it but I want people to have a reaction, and a strong reaction. Roger should play a character that has people talking," he said. "I don't know that I would have tried this with a lot of other people."

Watch Howarth in his GH role as Franco.

Tags
General hospital, One Life To Live, Soap opera