Days of our Lives is once again in the midst of a major overhaul, but this latest change has fans of the show excited in a whole new way.
Former One Life to Live and General Hospital writer Ron Carlivati has taken on the role of DAYS' new head writer -- the NBC soap's third since 2015 -- and his Emmy-winning writing talents are bound to make Salem a completely different place. But what exactly can viewers expect once his material begins airing? The show's executive producer, Ken Corday, opens up about the changes fans will see when Carlivati's storylines begin airing this July.
"He will bring to the show things that the show hasn't had for quite a while," Corday tells Soap Opera Digest. "What he said to me is that he wants the show to make you laugh again and he wants the show to make you cry again and he wants the show to make you yearn for certain couples again as opposed to, 'Why are they doing this? Why are they doing that?'"
Couples like John (Drake Hogestyn) and Marlena (Deidre Hall), Patch (Stephen Nichols) and Kayla (Mary Beth Evans), and Rafe (Galen Gering) and Hope (Kristian Alfonso) will take center stage and have "a stronger presence on the show," Corday teases, adding that other characters will also play big when summer comes.
"He will be giving more to Nicole [Arianne Zucker], Brady [Eric Martsolf], Eric [Greg Vaughan], and Chloe [Nadia Bjorlin]," he says. "Ron sees the legacy characters as important, not set dressing. The viewers have made it very clear to us that they want to see certain characters with other characters, and he's listening and I'm listening and we're going to try and implement that."
In addition to shifting focus to legacy characters, Carlivati will be tackling one of viewers' biggest complaints: that the show is "too dark."
Says Corday, "Yes, that's the thing we'll be getting away from the most, is the onerous, ‘I can't watch this anymore' kind of darkness. I'll just say at a time when there's enough bad news on the air, we don't need to see it reflected on Days of our Lives. We don't need to see people doing the wrong things with the wrong people. People want to come to this show for a safe haven. They want to be entertained and warmed and, you know, cuddle up with DAYS again."
Unfortunately, due to DAYS' advanced taping schedule, viewers will have to wait until July for these positive changes to take place, plus several weeks after that for the ball to really get rolling. But Corday promises it will be worth the wait.
"I wish [the changes] could happen faster. I'm not impulsive, but I'm a little impatient. We have to kind of pull the show out of where it's been. It's going to take us about four to six weeks to get it to where I'm talking about. Let's say, beginning of July to mid-August/September, and that's a long time to ask the viewers to hang in there," he says. "The shift will take about two months for him to kind of re-solidify, wiggle out of what was there in the summer, and give us a fall that's much more in keeping with [the changes mentioned above]."
For more from Corday on the future of DAYS, be sure to pick up the latest issue of Soap Opera Digest.
What do you think about some of the storyline changes Corday promises will happen under Ron Carlivati? What other changes would you like to see on DAYS in the months ahead? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.
