ALL TOO REAL
Suzanne Rogers’s initial reaction to Maggie’s suicide attempt on DAYS “freaked me out a bit,” says the actress.
“Jeffrey Epstein had just hanged himself in prison in New
York, and I thought, ‘Oh, God! I hope they don’t do that to me.’ Then I saw it in the script and went, ‘Oh, no,’ because being a religious person, you’re not supposed to do that.
So I was doubly whacked with that. That whole day my hands were like ice.” Once Rogers got past her personal concerns, she wanted to make sure her work was authentic.
“I thought, ‘How do I make this look believable, that Maggie was at such a state in her mind and in her life that she would do such a thing?’ ” recounts Rogers. “I told the camera guys, ‘I want you to tell me if it doesn’t look real. You’ve got to make sure that it doesn’t look phony.’ ” All was going smoothly until Paul Telfer had to race into the scene as Xander. “There was a sliding glass door he had to open,” relays Rogers. “For some reason, he thought it was a full open door. He pulled it right off the runners and it went flying.” Adds Telfer, “Sometimes I forget our sets aren’t real prisons or mansions or whatever. As soon as they called action, I ran, swung the door aside, swept up Suzanne, and started acting my heart out. I heard all this clanging and smashing behind me, but didn’t stop until somebody yelled cut. Then I heard people laughing and finally wheezing over the PA system. I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ I looked over and saw I’d torn down the set wall. I said, ‘Sorry, guys. I didn’t realize my own strength.’ ”