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Digest: Is there anything you did that you loved at WORLD TURNS that you would do here at DAYS?
Sheffer: Yes, in fact, it’s very interesting you should ask that. I guess because I was so familiar and so comfortable at [ATWT], I was looking for characters that are similar. Hal is very much like Abe Carver, the steadfast, older guy who always does the moral and the right thing. But one of the best things that I did at [ATWT] — and I did some awful things at [ATWT] — but one of the best things I did was to use Colleen Zenk Pinter [Barbara], who was a coffee pourer when I got to the show. She’s a mature woman who’s still gorgeous and sexual and we turned her into sort of the hub of manipulation. On this show, we’ve got Lauren Koslow [Kate]. That woman is phenomenal and sexy and fun. She’s gonna be very central to a lot of what’s going on. What I want to try and avoid are the same plots. I don’t want people to say, “Oh, he’s telling the same story he told on [ATWT].” So, that’s been the trick.Digest: You said you don’t do aliens or possession. What about the gloved hand?
Sheffer: Well, that’s just a soap opera trick. There’s nothing wrong with that; you just can’t milk it forever. What we’re working on now is exposing what the gloved hand’s all about. Even before my story starts, I want the audience to know who’s doing it and then will they be able to track him down before the last hammer falls. It’s a weird story because it really has no romantic tilt to it at all, except that some of the things that have happened have upset romantic pairings, but the central story itself is kind of a shaggy dog story and it’s just been going on way, way too long. And it’s so confusing. Digest: When will we first see your material on air?
Sheffer: I think my stuff will start about the beginning of October, but leading up to that, Beth Millstein got he interim job between Jim and myself, and has done yeoman’s work of gearing the material toward what I’m gonna need when I start on my own long story. You can sorta see the changes now. It’ll just get better and better, more cohesion, plots that make sense, no false tags, logic, character logic…. One of the first shows I watched when I was taking a look at it back in June, Abe and Roman, the commissioner and the captain of the police, and they were talking about saving Bo’s marriage, not finding the bad guy. Let me tell you something. I’ve known a lot of guys on the force. Nobody ever talks like that. So the first thing you’ve got to do is hand the men back their penises because strong men are better for the women. You can’t just have women running amok and the men doing nothing. So, we’re going to use the history, make the men strong and let the women run amok. There’s your formula. Digest: New writers often like to create new families. Will you?
Sheffer: Absolutely not. I introduced no new families to [ATWT]. Stuck with the Montgomerys, the Hugheses and the Snyders. Over the years, for reasons that make no sense to me, the Hortons virtually disappeared and it’s all Bradys, leading to this outbreak of incest in Salem. So to start, we found a couple of Hortons that are out there who are in their early ’20s or late teens and I would like to build more of a Horton clan, but I have no desire to bring in my own family. I think that’s despicable, I really do. This show has enough great characters, the family connections are tight. You bring in a new family, nobody has any investment in them whatsoever. Digest: What do you think is the greatest challenge you face?
Sheffer: Bringing the audience back and making sure that they have faith. It’s easy to impress the actors with good scripts and to impress Ken with long story, but we want the audience back. We want them to know that this is gonna be the show that they loved again, with real characters and real depth of relationships and good plot that moves really fast. No one’s going to be hoarding secrets for a year. I want the audience to know things before the characters do. I’d rather let the audience in on the secret and let them sit and bite their nails about when it’s going to be exposed, rather than trying to play a mystery game with them. I think the audience will respond to that. If we can bring the audience back, I’ll be a very happy man, a very happy man.
Digest: Anything else?
Sheffer: The one thing that is missing from the show right now is that sense of humor. I brought that to [ATWT] with Terri [Colombino. Katie]. I would love to bring that to DAYS. Alison [Sweeney, Sami] is a wonderful actor, and we want to take her and Lucas back to being funny. Along with all the heavy emotions and the deep connections between people, life is also laughter. It’s the only thing I ever disagreed with Irna Phillips about. She said, “Nobody should laugh on soaps.” She’s wrong. Everybody should laugh on soaps now and then.Digest: For the rest of your life you will be known as Emmy-winner Hogan Sheffer. Does that bring its own pressure?
Sheffer: A little bit it does, yeah, but you know, I don’t like the Emmys. I like getting them, but the whole award show? I avoided it on a couple of occasions, even one time when I won. I’d like to win one for Ken Corday, that’s what it comes down to. This is his family show, his mom and dad’s show. I think it’s been treated neglectfully lately. That’s as much as I’ll say about that.Digest: Last question: What kind of town is Salem going to be on your watch?
Sheffer: What you’re going to see is a real town with real family connections again. I want to give it a real sense of a real place that’s familiar to everybody and where the audience tunes in and it’s like putting on a pair of old slippers. This article originally appearred in the September 12, 2006 issue of Soap Opera Digest.
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