Deidre Hall on Saying Goodbye to John on DAYS
Because Days of Our Lives tapes so far in advance, the episodes airing now were actually shot before Drake Hogestyn passed away in September 2024. Knowing that the actor was battling cancer, the soap wrote the character off the canvas to explain his absence. So as the characters respond to John’s death, their portrayers were still hoping that Hogestyn would beat the odds and return to the screen.
“I understand that Ken [Korday, DAYS’ executive producer] had [spoken to Drake] and that the door was wide open for him,” Deidre Hall shared with Soap Opera Digest. “Ken had said, ‘The minute you’re ready to come back, you’re back.’ I think all of us that loved him so much were just braced for whichever [outcome it might be]. ‘Please come back. We would love to have you be able to come back.’ Drake loved working. He loved being there. He loved everyone from the night crew to [the people who worked in] the commissary. He was close to everybody.
“Our greatest wish was that he would rally enough to come back,” she continued. “I’m sure that you could tell when he was still on air that he was getting thinner. The wardrobe department was doing a lot to try to ameliorate that. It was a tough one. But we wanted him there so much and he wanted to be there so much, so we were all pulling in the same direction to hopefully make that happen.”
John and Marlena’s love story has spanned the decades.Gary Null/NBC
Knowing Hogestyn’s uncertain future, Hall confessed that the actors had to control their emotions while shooting the scenes for this storyline. “It’s hard to find the balance,” she admitted. “You don’t want to tap into it too deeply, because then there you are or you’re out of control.”
Still, as hard as it was for the cast to play out this heartbreaking storyline, the actress felt it was the writing staff who had the hardest job. “I also think the writers were having an enormous struggle with how to play it all out — how to have him there if he wanted to be there and how to position ourselves in the show if he were not to be there again,” Hall explained. “So it was a tough one. I think the writers had a bigger challenge than we did. We just had to get through it. They had to create it.”
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