Already have an account?
Get back to the

Interview

ICYMI: Linsey Godfrey Interview

"Days of our Lives" Set
Linsey Godfrey "Days of our Lives" Set NBC Studios Burbank 08/08/18 © XJJohnson/jpistudios.com 310-657-9661 Credit: JPI

DAYS’s Linsey Godfrey guested on Digest’s podcast, Dishing With Digest, and talked about playing Sarah, leaving B&B behind, her new love and more.

 

Soap Opera Digest: Who did you test with or work with in your audition scenes?

Linsey Godfrey: I tested with Greg Vaughan [Eric] and did a second test with Kyle Lowder [Rex].

Digest: The two men you’ll be working with! So at the time, were you looking to get back into daytime?

Godfrey: Yeah, you know I respect this genre and I think it’s really wonderful and such a challenge as far as acting-wise, ’cause we move at such a quick pace. It’s also such a wonderful job because we film here and we don’t film like these really long, crazy hours. For being a single parent it’s kind of an ideal job. I love this genre and I love the opportunities that I get to have being a part of it, so when the DAYS audition came up I was super-excited and I was ready to go.

Digest: Obviously, you’ve been at B&B and you have some familiarity with life on a soap set. How was DAYS different, if at all, from the set you were used to?

Godfrey: It was kind of the same in the fact like, you know, you walk into the set where so many people have been here for 40 years and that feels intimidating, you’re like, “Man, I’m really walking into somebody else’s home.” But it was similar with B&B where it’s nothing of what you think it’s gonna be; everybody is so lovely and everybody’s so welcoming and kind and they’re excited for you to be there and they want to get to know you, they make you feel very welcomed and they get excited to play with someone new, so it was really wonderful. It was very similar to my experience at B&B in that way and different just ’cause it’s an hour instead of a half hour, so there’s a lot more to it! But it was wonderful. I was pleasantly surprised, as I was when I started at BOLD, as well.

Digest: So what were your first few days like? Who showed you around? Who told you where to go to lunch?

Godfrey: Greg Vaughan took me under his wing for the first, I think, week or two. I turned into a puppy around Greg. He just kind of like walked me by hand everywhere I needed to go. He was such a gentleman. And Kyle was very willing to help. Suzanne [Rogers, Maggie] would answer any questions I had. I feel I had an advantage this time where it wasn’t the first time I had been on this genre. You know we call things different than we do on prime-time like, a call sheet on soaps is called a rundown, scenes are called items, so things like that I already knew, whereas when I started on BOLD, I was like, “What are we talking about?”

Digest: Speaking of B&B, as a viewer your departure really felt a little abrupt. What was it like for you to leave the show?

Godfrey: Well, it was not necessarily my decision. They had run out of story for the character, so I think the best option for them was to write her off while they focused on other storylines that had a little more going. It felt abrupt for me, as well. I really loved B&B and I really loved Caroline and I loved how they wrote her. I loved the way that Brad [Bell, executive producer/head writer] and all the head writers really found a sweet spot with Caroline. I was sad to go, but I totally understand how the business works. I told them I’d always be open to being there whenever they wanted me to because she’s just such a fun thing to play. B&B always felt like home. It was something I understood. It’s the nature of the beast.

Digest: Anything stand out in particular when you look back at your B&B experience, like co-stars you worked with or storylines you really liked doing?

Godfrey: I mean, I met some of my best friends in the whole entire world at B&B. Kim Matula [ex-Hope] and I are still best friends…. Rena Sofer [Quinn] is one of my best friends. I love her. I’m so very close with Ash Brewer [ex-Ivy] and Thorsten [Kaye, Ridge]. Thorsten will always be one of my favorite people. He was so great to me. And John McCook [Eric] is the best person in the whole entire world. John McCook for President! I’d vote for him.

Digest: Us, too!

Godfrey: But yeah, I mean there’s lot of things that stand out. I met [Robert Adamson, Noah, Y&R/her daughter’s father] working across the hall, I met my other best friend Camryn Grimes [Mariah, Y&R] working across the hall, so there’s so many things. It was such a good period in my life for those five years. I only look back on it with such fondness and such love. When I got to go back early this year in February and do those scenes, I was so excited just to go and play and see everybody and get to work with people like Annika [Noelle, Hope], who I’d never gotten to work with before. I just adore her. I mean, I haven’t been back since they’ve made some new hires, but I hear wonderful things and I think the fans are really happy with what they’re doing over there, so that makes me happy.

Digest: So Linsey, you have had obstacles to overcome in your own life that would rival any soap story. The first would be overcoming cancer at such a young age. You were so young when you were diagnosed. What was that like for you and how, as you look back on it now, would you say that it changed you or shaped you?

Godfrey: You know, when it happened it was definitely, like, earth-shattering. My family tends to be really good in crisis…. We looked at it like a hurdle race where you just had to get over it and sometimes you can jump over the hurdle and sometimes you kind of just flop over it but you still get over it! That was kind of what mode I went into. It wasn’t until years later that I looked back and I was like, “Oh, my God, that’s terrifying! I almost died!” I know it sounds weird to say, but I am grateful for that experience and I’m grateful for having had that, especially being so young because I think it really puts things into perspective a lot of times, especially like if I’m having a bad day or things feel hard or too difficult I’m like, “Things could always be so much worse; I could not be here anymore.” I think, in general, I’m just generally happy to be here. I’m just generally happy to still be around.

Battle Ground: Godfrey, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2006,  is a proud cancer survivor. 

Digest: Well, as if that wasn’t enough, in 2015 you were hit by a car while walking in Los Angeles. For anyone who doesn’t know what happened, what can you tell us about the accident and your recovery now?

Godfrey: Three-and-a-half years ago, I was just on the sidewalk and there was a car accident and one of the cars went across seven lanes of traffic and came up and over the sidewalk and kind of took out me and a bus bench and broke both of my legs. I dislocated and broke both of my ankles and then my tib fib on my left leg, which is your shin bone. Neither of my feet were facing in the right direction; both were facing in directions that feet aren’t supposed to face. It was another huge setback and it was hard. My daughter was only seven-and-a-half months at the time. It was a difficult thing, but I was very fortunate to have the support of my mom and Aleda’s dad and we had this incredible, incredible nanny named Amanda Clark and we’d call her my “ladysitter” because she would not only take care of my daughter, she’d help take care of me. And Brad Bell was incredible during that time. He helped with the nanny and they sent flowers and they checked in constantly.

Digest: And so how are you today? Are you 100 percent recovered, would you say?

Godfrey: Yeah, I’m doing good! I’m 100 percent recovered. The metal bothers me and I think just because of the placement of it. I call it my “Frankenleg” for a reason. It looks like somebody went in and like just kind of put screws in like willy-nilly in all different directions and so that bothers me after a while if I stand on my feet for a long time.

Digest: Tell us about Aleda and what she is up to and what she is like when she’s not playing in the wardrobe room.

Godfrey: She’s amazing, man. I got so lucky with that kid. She’s so great. She’s in preschool and she’s learning how to read and she can write her name. She’s just so smart and she’s really, really funny and she’s making lots of friends. She just likes normal kid stuff: She loves to climb trees and go on bike rides and go swimming. She loves doing art, which I love doing. Her dad and I joke, like, Dad’s kind of like “outside dad” and Mom’s kind of “craft mom”. Dad does not do crafts, Mom does outside, it just depends on what kind of outside. Mom doesn’t do camping, that’s a dad thing in our family! … Maybe I would if I was with my boyfriend and stuff like that, but then when I think about taking all the kids to go camping, I’m like, “Oh, my God, that sounds terrible!”

Digest: Speaking of your boyfriend, Breckin Meyer, you have posted many photos together. How did you two meet?

Godfrey: It’s such a stupid way that we met. We actually met on the old Internet. It was just an app. There’s an app for people in our industry for dating and we met that way. He was out of town filming in Toronto, so most of our communication was just on FaceTime for the first week that we got to know each other. We’d sit on FaceTime for, like, four hours at a time. And then so when we finally got to meet each other in person, [we’d] known each other forever and that was kind of it! That was it. We were done.

Digest: How long have you been together?

Godfrey: Just under a year.

Digest: You seem to do a lot of fun things together.

Godfrey: We do! It’s so funny ’cause we weren’t people who did a lot of fun things without each other, and then together we became these people who go on adventures and do fun things.

Digest: Were you a fan of his before you met him as an actor?

Godfrey: I always tell him all the time, I’m like, “I had the biggest crush on you when I was growing up. I loved Travis from Clueless.” And I loved him in Road Trip and all that kind of stuff. He thinks that’s really funny and I think it’s really funny. He was adorable and we both have big crushes on each other. He’s the best!

Digest: Has he become a DAYS fan?

Godfrey: He started recording it so he can watch. He’s watched the first couple of episodes. I think he’s probably watched more episodes than I have, which I think is really funny.

Digest: We were talking about how Sarah is actually unique in that she has been aged down, whereas most characters are rapidly aged.

Godfrey: Sarah has been doing some microneedling, she has a really great moisturizer, she uses all the Retin-A … It was so funny, when I did the math, I was like, “That can’t be right!”

Digest: She was an adult in 1991.

Godfrey: Yeah, she’d be in her 50s right now. Adrienne Frantz [ex-Amber] told me one time when I started on B&B, I said, “How old are you?” And she said, “I don’t know.” And I was like, “What do you mean?” And she goes, “I have no idea. They aged me up so that I could play love interest with somebody and then they aged me down so it wasn’t so creepy for me to play love interest with someone else. I feel like I’m somewhere in my 20s, maybe in the mid-ish to late-ish, but I could also maybe be in my 30s or maybe 21. I have no clue.” She goes, “Here’s all you need to know in soaps: You’re old enough to drink or you’re not and that’s it.”

JPI

Digest: It’s a very good rule of thumb. I would be interested in knowing her other soap advice, ’cause so far she’s nailing it.

Godfrey: Yeah, I was dying laughing! Now people ask me that and I go, “I just know I’m old enough to drink.”

 

 

Check out our new podcast, Dishing With Digest!

Comments