DAYS Exclusive: Paul Telfer on Xander and Sarah’s ‘Heart-Wrenching’ Confrontation

Love On The Rocks: Xander (Paul Telfer) and Sarah’s (Linsey Godfrey) future is on the line.

After months of being lied to by Sarah, the person he loves most in this world, Xander has finally uncovered the inconceivable truth on Days of Our Lives: His wife knew that Philip scammed him to gain half of the Kiriakis empire and kept the huge secret from him for months. Xander’s portrayer, Paul Telfer, spoke to Soap Opera Digest about his character’s efforts to expose the lie that’s been perpetuated against him and what it all means for the future of Salem lovebirds Sarah and Xander.

Soap Opera Digest: How difficult was it for Xander to believe that Sarah could actually do something like this?

Paul Telfer: It’s that thing of not wanting it to be true. The audience noticed all these things that Xander should have noticed – the way certain characters were behaving, the kind of clinginess of some of their lives, like Sarah being friendly and cordial with Philip in the aftermath of the big revelation [that Victor’s letter was a forgery]. It was just people not being surprised when they should have been surprised.

Digest: Sarah’s advice to Xander as the Titan faction and the DiMera faction worked to save and ultimately take over the hospital also raised Xander’s suspicions.

Telfer: Obviously, [the situation at the hospital] deeply affected Sarah. She was kind of knee-deep in all of that, and some of her suggestions and advice to Xander during that period didn’t really jibe with her usual approach to things or with what Xander thought should happen. It just added to that little bit of suspicion of, “There’s something going on here.” But there was just no part of Xander that was putting Sarah in the frame of the lie and the fraud and all that. It’s not even that he couldn’t accept it, it just wasn’t on his radar remotely until it was. Then, all at once, it went off like a bomb. Once the veil was pulled up, he could see all the things he’d been willfully blind to for… how long has it been? Half a year? A year? It’s been going on a long time.

Digest: Xander kind of gaslit Sarah as he began putting two and two together. Was it his subtle way of getting a little revenge after how long she’d been deceiving him?

Telfer: It was more that he didn’t want to straight up accuse Sarah. I mean, yes, it was gaslighting, but I don’t think it was for the typical reason. Usually Xander would gaslight someone specifically to drive them crazy or to get them to do something. With this Xander was just trying to feel around the edges of this possible awful thing that Sarah’s done and could not bring himself to just outright accuse her. So he just started to behave as if this hypothetical thing had in fact already happened and talked as if he knew something that he didn’t know. And that’s what forced Sarah to fill in those gaps. So it was a little bit cat-and-mouse that came from this deep, deep denial that he didn’t want it to be true more than him trying to corner her in a lie.

Digest: How angry is Xander with Sarah now that the truth has come out? And how does this lie compare to the one she kept from him about Victoria’s paternity?

Telfer: They weren’t together at the time of their last big collapse. Xander was engaged to Chloe, but found out that the person he really loved deep down, his one true love, had a child with him and hated him so much that she didn’t want him to know because he was too dangerous. Even if he loved her more than anyone else in the world, he was still going to do things that brought danger into her life and by extension into their daughter’s life. That just wasn’t acceptable to Sarah, and it was a very reasonable position. But they loved each other so much that they couldn’t help but be drawn back together. Since then Sarah seemed to accept that she had married a very dangerous person. As much as it’s awful that he tried to kill Brady and pulled the trigger of an empty gun on Philip, Sarah accepted to a degree that that’s who Xander is and that he is now working to mitigate against his worst instincts. That’s what led to this lie. Sarah thought that she knew enough to be able to wrangle Xander with falsehoods to control his behavior just a little bit and protect everyone, but specifically protect their marriage, her, and their daughter from his potential outbursts. When all of that came out the first time around, Xander felt this deep hurt and couldn’t bring himself to believe that Sarah really thought of him that way and couldn’t have him in Victoria’s life.

Digest: How does he feel now?

Telfer: Now there’s not just the rage and the anger at the betrayal, but there’s also this terror of loss. It’s like, “Wait a minute. Nothing’s changed. You still don’t trust me. You still don’t believe that I won’t fly off the handle and try and kill everybody. You still think I’m a danger to our daughter.” Sarah and Xander have been together for all this time, and it’s been, from his perspective, wonderful. So it’s not just the anger, but it’s the awfulness of potentially losing all of that.

Digest: Xander’s kind of the wronged party this time around.

Telfer: It’s like, “How can I be with this woman? What’s the point anymore, if I do everything aboveboard and I’m honest and good, but then she’s dishonest in order to, what, force me to continue to be the way I’ve become?” It’s so sad. Xander’s feeling this mixture of sadness and rage and deep tragic loss.

Digest: Those scenes between you and Linsey Godfrey (Sarah) were quite poignant and powerful, especially as Sarah pleaded her case for what she’d done.

Telfer: The scenes allowed Sarah to have more strength and more weaponry, I guess, in the argument. She’s not wrong. She did a bad thing and she was wrong to do it, but her motivations made total sense if you look at it on paper and look at Xander’s behavior over the years. But it becomes this thing of, “Is this entire love story untenable? Can it actually continue?” It’s super heart-wrenching, the way it plays out. The fact that it happens at the same time as all this other high-stress stuff is going on in Xander and Sarah’s life just heightens it even more. It’s like the whole world is crumbling around them. The ground is literally disintegrating beneath their feet, and it’s just awful.