Head Writer Ron Carlivati Gives The Inside Scoop On May Sweeps.
We had so many stories that were set up for so long and set up over the missing year with that baby switch and Adrienne’s death,” says Carlivati. “Now we’re in this chapter of, where does it go from here? So even though there’s a lot of rollout, it’s a really great time to jump in, and an exciting time for the audience to see some new, fresh stories starting.”
Rex/Sarah: “When we had Sarah flee the country with baby Mickey, who is really baby Rachel, we decided to use Paris because we have this lovely set of Abigail and Chad’s apartment from when we did ‘Chad & Abby In Paris’ on the DOOL App. When you have somebody flee the country, the problem is, who are they going to interact with? We kind of went through some possibilities and ultimately we thought of Rex. She was engaged to him and he’s part of the family, and has a vested interest in where this baby belongs. We came up with that idea and then we reached out to Kyle [Lowder, Rex] to see if he would be available. Because Rex doesn’t live in Salem, we thought it was possible that he’s not aware of what’s going on and that she’s not supposed to have this baby. So, we had some fun with that.”
Kristen/Brady: “We wanted to build the desperation in Kristen. Kristen, because she’s Kristen, was so enraged when she found out about the baby switch that she stabbed Victor. We wanted to put her into this legal jeopardy so she couldn’t go after Sarah. But as a mother, we know she’s got to find some way to overcome this. Brady tries to take the rap for her but as you’ll see, his story starts to crumble a little bit and the police are sort of on to the fact that he’s covering for Kristen. We are able to pull Lani into that story. I think the audience really liked the Kristen/Lani friendship that we developed during the missing year when they were nuns together. They’re such an unlikely duo. I really like that friendship, and so we put Lani into an interesting moral position. As a friend and seeing a mother in pain, she wants to help her friend but legally, she’s supposed to hold her here, so what does Lani do?”
Eli/Lani: “Obviously, if Lani ultimately chooses to help Kristen, she’s at best bending the law, if not outright breaking the law. She wants to keep Eli out of that to protect him from that. But Eli, as a cop, when he sort of realizes what she’s done, what is he going to do? I mean, ultimately, he should arrest Lani. Is he going to be able to do that? And if he does decide to cover for her, what does that do to their relationship?”
Sarah/Brady/Victor: “Whereas Kristen took the more impulsive action of stabbing Victor in the chest, Brady, who can be impulsive, is going to take a slightly different path of stepping back and being like, ‘How can I best punish Victor for what he did to me?’ Ultimately, he concocts a plan to get back at Victor and finds an ally in Sarah because she’s someone, obviously, who resents Victor for letting her fall in love with a baby that was not her own.”
Maggie: “We realized that when we concocted this story with the car accident, that not only from Maggie’s drinking and driving was she responsible for Adrienne’s death, she was also responsible for the death of her own grandchild, that it was a lot to put on anyone. The big question is, ‘Will Maggie be able to live with this?’ She’s taken responsibility and gone to prison, but Maggie really is at the lowest point you could imagine when the story takes an interesting twist and you realize there may be a little bit more to the story of what happened the night of the car crash. So that is just another chapter of that story that has yet to roll out.”
Hope/Steve/Kayla/Justin: “Hope and Steve have done awful things to people that they love, and even though everyone else tells them it wasn’t their fault, and they weren’t in control of their own actions, it doesn’t feel that way to them. They understand each other in a way that no one else can, and it makes for a very interesting bond. You’ll have to see what develops there. At the same time, Steve is in this mode of, ‘Kayla’s happy with a really good guy, and also I care a lot about Justin, who lost Adrienne, and I wasn’t even there for that. I want to see him finally happy.’ Even though we know deep down Steve loves and wants Kayla, he thinks he doesn’t deserve her. The question is now, ‘Is Kayla done with Steve? Is Steve really done with Kayla?’ But in the meantime we do have a chance to explore a very nice bond between Hope and Steve.”
Orpheus/Marlena/John: “Orpheus has been back trying to find a way to free his son. Ultimately, he did try the legal route to hold on to this grandchild, but Orpheus being Orpheus is not going to always go the legal route. He thinks the more direct way is to take the kid. But being that it’s Orpheus, John and Marlena have to be part of that story. We often play Marlena as the damsel in distress that needs to be rescued by John, and we decided to go a different way this time and have Orpheus take John so that Marlena has to step up and be the one to save and rescue John. What’s interesting is that she turns to Steve and Hope, which obviously is a big moment because Steve and Hope were as ‘Stefano’ and ‘Gina’ for a year trying to break them up and possibly even kill them. But it shows Marlena’s faith in her actual friends, Steve and Hope, and her awareness that they’re not the same people. When John really needs help, she turns to people who she knows can help him the most, his true friends. It’s fun to see them come together to try to rescue John.”
Zoey/Rafe: “We pitted Zoey against Rafe and against the police department right away as a lawyer trying to help her brother. She was an interesting character to play because she seems to have a moral code, but also because of the love of her family, she’s kind of gone out on a big limb to help Christian [Evan] and even to help Orpheus. But as we see, she’s not entirely comfortable with everything that her father does. Even though she’s been an adversary to Rafe, she offers to help Rafe. But we have to wonder, as this is Orpheus’s daughter, can she really be trusted? Is she playing Rafe or is this sincere?”
Gabi/Jake: “Gabi sees this guy a couple of times from a distance. She thinks she’s seeing things. She thinks she’s seeing a ghost. She finally realizes it’s a real person, but when she finally confronts him, he’s like, ‘Lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen you before in my life. My name’s not Stefan, it’s Jake.’ But Gabi is convinced this has got to be Stefan. The guy looks exactly like her husband. Either he’s pretending he’s not Stefan for some reason or he doesn’t know who he is. Something happened to him and now he thinks he’s this other guy, or Rolf has made him think he’s some other guy. You’re going to take the journey with Gabi, what the truth is about Jake.”
Ben/Ciara: “We thought it would be interesting since Ben worked for Stefan, to connect Ben and Jake together. Jake owns this motorcycle shop and he’s very, very different from Stefan. He’s more of this blue-collar, grease monkey guy. Ben ends up getting a job there. We tried to sort of re-create the friendship that we had in Stefan and Ben with Ben and Jake.What we realize is that we don’t know so much about this mysterious Jake, so there is some danger swirling around him that Ben gets sucked into working at the garage. Meanwhile, at the same time, now that he has a job and he’s getting a paycheck every week, Ben ultimately decides to do what the audience has been waiting for since he got out of prison, to propose. He does that in a very sweet, romantic way that’s very Ben and Ciara, I think, so I’m excited for the audience to experience that.”
Abigail/Chad: “Abigail starts having these hallucinations and it’s discovered that she has been drugged. The drug was something that was being developed by a DiMera, so it creates some interesting possibilities of who was behind it, mainly Gabi, who hates Abigail and Chad, and possibly could have had access to this drug, and was with Abigail and Chad in a convenient moment where she could have been behind it. So, Abigail’s having a hard time telling the difference between reality and what’s fantasy. Even though the drug is not in her system anymore, it has altered her brain chemistry so that the hallucinations persist and it’s hard for her to tell when something is really happening and when it’s not. They hospitalize her to try to get to the bottom of this to see if they can help her, and right around this time, she disappears from the hospital. Now Chad is trying to figure out where she would have gone and why.”
Eric/Nicole: “The audience has been waiting to see Eric and Nicole get married for a long, long time. And also, because we had that missing year, we didn’t want to do it then. We made sense of it by saying Nicole felt so guilty that she was keeping that baby secret from him that she did not want to get married. We wanted the audience to be able to see it in real time and see the proposal, and ultimately see the wedding. But I will tease that it’s not just Ben and Ciara and Eric and Nicole. There could be wedding bells ringing for other couples in Salem. Prepare for wedding season.”
Abe/Kate: “So Kate is a little bit of persona non grata. Roman fired her and you wonder what’s going to become of her. She gets involved with something that’s going on with Abe and she pitches herself as sort of a PR spokesperson for the mayor’s office. Abe is understandably resistant to this idea. Her own PR isn’t so great right now. But she kind of proves herself and Abe gives her a chance. It’s kind of interesting to see Abe with this very assertive PR woman who sometimes has her own agenda. Those two sort of clash right away, but Abe’s not quite ready to fire her just yet.”
