Posing as Abe’s son, Theo Carver, a role he actually portrayed from 2008-15, was a bit challenging for Terrell Ransom Jr., who recently resurfaced as Jerry, an actor Whitley hired to impersonate his old character.
“Coming back pretending was honestly kind of harder than you can imagine. There was none of that awkwardness. There was none of that pretending to be the son of someone that you had no idea who he was,” explains Ransom, referring to actor James Reynolds (Abe). “He’d been my TV dad for, like, seven years. It was kind of wild to pretend that I had no idea who this man was sitting in front of me.”
Being asked back to the show years after the powers-that-be decided to age Theo, “was the craziest thing,” admits Ransom. “I got an email from my manager saying, ‘DAYS would like to have you back for a few episodes. Would you want to do it?’ I was like, ‘Wow. Yes, of course.’ I didn’t even know what the role would be.”
After accepting the gig, the information started trickling in. “They said, ‘You will be playing ‘a Theo’, and there’s another character,’ ” he recalls. “I was a little bit confused. Then I got the script and was like, ‘Okay, now I get it. This is going to be cool.’”
Ransom was quite excited about the prospect of seeing the DAYS cast and crew again. “I made sure I was dressed nice my first day to make a good impression. I had on nice jeans, a button up shirt and a cowhide jacket. It was like, ‘Yeah. I came back good,’ ” he shares with a laugh. “By the second week, I was in sweats and a hoodie.”
And being back on the set for the first time as an adult is something he won’t soon forget. “If I had a dime for every time I heard, ‘Oh, my God, Terrell. It’s been so long. You were this tall the last time I saw you. I’m sure you don’t remember me,’ ” recounts the actor. “It was crazy, because everything was the same. The sets are the same. A lot of people are still [working] there. It was like seeing your distant relatives after a long time. It was really nice, and everyone made me feel so welcome, like I hadn’t even left.”
His reunion with Reynolds was particularly memorable. “I was actually getting my Covid test before I saw him on set. I had a mask on, and my hair was actually dyed [blonde],” notes Ransom, who ended up having to dye it brown for the role. “I went up to him and tapped him. He turned around and said, ‘Hi. Nice to meet you.’ Then I pulled the mask down a little bit and he was like, ‘Terrell.’ It was so funny. He’s exactly the same, this wise man who it feels like has the answer to every question. I still get that from him.”
The actor also had a fun behind-the-scenes moment with Billy Flynn (Chad), who once played his DAYS uncle. “I was in hair and makeup, when I saw Billy,” he recalls. “I remembered how often we had scenes together. When I saw him, he recognized me immediately. That was so cool.”
Ransom recalls a lot about his initial run on the soap, including being abruptly let go in 2015. “I was sad, but I don’t think I really processed it as such a bad thing,” he says. “Being on the show was a nice experience. Also, I was very grateful to have been there for so long. I know [aging a character] usually happens early on, and I was pretty old by the time it happened to me. [The show] gave me a DAYS jacket and a pillow when I left, but what I remember the most were all the Instagram posts from my TV dad and mom saying, ‘Oh, we’ll miss you.’ That’s what got me.”
During his years away from DAYS, Ransom has continued to work on an array of different projects. Among them, he was the voice of Darwin Watterson in Cartoon Networks series THE AMAZING WORLD OF GUMBALL. “Me and my entire family would sit down and watch that show; it was one of our favorites,” he says. “When I got the audition for one of the main characters, I was like, ‘Okay. I have to get this.’ And I did.”
And there was his recurring role as Andre in Freeform’s GOOD TROUBLE. “The character that I played started off as the bad kid, this problem child,” notes Ransom. “Then a teacher recognizes where his bad behavior stems from, the public school system and how they treat kids. She helps him and his friend protest to help them get treated better. It was all about people with rights in the public school system, Black Lives Matter and all that stuff. It is very close to my heart in real life, and it was cool to be able to portray that in a show.”
Now, of course, Ransom is back on DAYS, playing a bit of a “problem child” again. “It’s definitely an interesting character arc,” he admits. “At times it was like, ‘Oh, this is weird. What’s going on?’ ”And it’s a far cry from the lovable little Theo he once was. “I’m just hoping [the fans] won’t hate me,” Ransom concludes.
