XJJohnson/jpistudios.com
Defense Strategy: Jamie Martin Mann admits that he struggled to justify how Tate would defend Holly (Ashley Puzemis).
Playing out the drama and angst that has been Tate Black’s life on DAYS OF OUR LIVES has been a formidable task for actor Jamie Martin Mann, who has had a rich well of scenes to play since Tate’s crush, Holly, overdosed on New Year’s Eve and Tate stood accused of supplying her with the drugs, leading to all manner of turmoil not just for Tate, but for his family.
Shares Mann, “It’s presented a lot of challenges just acting-wise, and it was really nice to have Eric [Martsolf, Brady] and Emily [O’Brien, Theresa] to play off of in those scenes, because the stakes were just so high.” He elaborates, “They were so high for so many different reasons. They were high because Holly was in a coma. They were high because I was locked away. They were high because I also didn’t believe that I had my parents on my side. Having the chance to play [Tate and his parents’] relationship and seeing how [Martsolf and O’Brien] were interpreting those stakes as well was really fun, really fulfilling and incredibly challenging.”
Mann found the pushback and “perspective from Brady and Theresa” regarding Holly to be spot-on, “because, objectively, Holly has been a bad influence,” he contends. “I had a hard time justifying, as an actor, all of the actions that Ashley’s [Puzemis, Holly] character was doing against me. That’s been really hard to do, because not only do I want to stick up for Tate as his portrayer, but I personally would never let someone walk all over me that much. So that was one of the bigger challenges for me, figuring out where in Tate’s person, where in his ideals and his ethics [allowed him to defend Holly’s actions]. What would influence him to continue to stick up for Holly?”
Ultimately, Mann leaned in to the genuinely good soul at Tate’s core. Says the actor, “It is a testament to the endearing nature of Tate and how much he cares about the people that he loves, which is the antithesis of the beginning of his character arc when he came in and was much less open and very apprehensive about his new life. But all of a sudden he became so immersed in it that he is willing to sacrifice everything for the girl that he really cares about. I don’t want to say ‘loves’ yet, because it’s young love. So it’s naive love. But it’s just that the stakes around [Tate and Holly] have gotten so high, so the feelings that they have for each other are inevitably parallel to those stakes.”
