Stephen A. Smith may be best known for his fiery takes in the world of sports, but now he’s making waves in the world of daytime drama — quite literally with a bang.

The ESPN host turned soap star recently stunned General Hospital viewers with his viral appearance as Brick, Sonny Corinthos’s trusted ally, in a scene that aired April 28. In the dramatic moment, Brick takes down an assassin disguised as a nurse who attempts to poison Sonny — and fans couldn’t get enough of the slow-motion gun pull that sealed the villain’s fate.

Speaking to PEOPLE, the 57-year-old admitted he usually avoids watching his own performances, but this time was different. “Getting an opportunity to murder somebody on General Hospital — it was hilarious,” he said, laughing. “Pulling out the gun, the slow-motion… that was just fun to watch.”

From the debate desk to Port Charles, Stephen A. has proven he’s got more than one scene-stealing move up his sleeve.

As a full-time sportscaster and only a part-time actor, Smith explains that there is an excitement about the popular soap opera that keeps drawing him back in.

“That’s the beauty that you learn to appreciate about acting,” he shares. “You are allowed to be whatever the particular role requires you to be, and there’s a freedom that comes with that that just makes you feel really, really good inside because you do things in acting that you’d never be allowed to do in real life. So you always pretend, ‘How would I look if I did this? How would I look if I did that?’ And that was one of those experiences.”

Smith, who hosts a weekday sports debate show called First Take on ESPN, adds that he has always been comfortable in front of a camera, but he didn’t go into acting with the expectation of landing a recurring role when he first took on the gig in 2016.

“I’m always going to love sports and doing what I do,” he says. “I mean, it’s made me who I am. Being synonymous with sports and giving sports commentary and being a sports journalist and broadcaster spanning the last three decades is obviously going to come first. I’ve never considered myself an actor or anything like that. But when the executive producer for General Hospital saw me and saw my talents on the set, he really, really believes that I have a set of natural skills that can really, really excel in this business. So it’s something I’ve left the door open to because you never know what the future holds.”

Stephen A. Smith in General Hospital.Christine Bartolucci/Disney

“Doing General Hospital over the last several years has been incredible,” he later gushes. “I’ve got a lot of friends on that show, and they’re very, very helpful to me and helped me get better at this particular craft.”

In his time dabbling in acting, Smith says he always hoped to appear on a primetime show, and recently, he was cast as a guest star in the May 8 episode of Law & Order.

“I never, in my wildest dreams, thought that I would get a call from Law & Order to appear,” he admits. “So I mean, that’s primetime, that’s bigtime. It means the world to me to have this experience. And to be quite honest with you, I thought I stepped it up and I thought that that’s the best I’ve been yet. So I’m very, very happy about that.”

Dushaun Thompson as Jackson Dean, Stephen A. Smith as Ted Hunter in Law & Order.Virginia Sherwood/NBC

Looking back at his experiences working on the legal drama and General Hospital, Smith says the two were completely different.

“I think that when you’re working on a soap opera, you want to make sure you know your lines because you don’t want to hold up everybody, so there’s similarities there,” he explains. “But it doesn’t appear as if you’ll get as many bites at the apple with soap operas as you do with primetime — even when you do it right, they still want you to do it five or six more times. Whereas with the soaps, all right, you got it done the first, the second time. Okay, let’s move forward.”