Kristian Alfonso and Peter Reckell Open Up About Returning to DAYS
In a little more than a year, DAYS OF OUR LIVES will celebrate its 60th anniversary — which would seem like the perfect time to bring back fan-favorite characters who have appeared on the soap opera over the years. For many longtime DAYS viewers, Salem supercouple Bo and Hope would be at the top of that favorites list… but would their portrayers, Peter Reckell and Kristian Alfonso, be open to returning once again?
The subject came up when Reckell and Alfonso recently chatted with David Lascher and Christine Taylor for their podcast, Hey Dude… The 90s Called! And while one of the performers was open to the possibility, the other…well, didn’t seem as eager.
“I was looking at the show, and the schedule they have [where] they do a bunch of shows and then they have a couple weeks off. I think I can do that,” Reckell confessed. “It looks like the kind of thing I’d like to get back in. Especially when this anniversary of the show’s coming up, it would be great to be a part of it.”
Reckell and Alfonso last appeared on the soap in April, but viewers were cheated out of a proper reunion when Bo lapsed into a coma after being shot by their son, Shawn. And while Reckell freely admitted that he hadn’t closed the door on another comeback, Alfonso was hesitant to share that she felt the same way. “Kristian’s a little quiet over there,” he noted.
Indeed, Alfonso had more complicated feelings on the matter. After Lascher brought up a quote the actress had made when she exited in 2020 that the soap had changed as she’d known it, Alfonso explained how important it was to her that the history and integrity of her character be respected. “I am one who likes to be honest, as far as the history of the characters, and I did not see that happening,” she divulged. “And I’m not going to lie in my performance or try to sell something that did not happen.”
Having experienced a large turnover in writers and producers over the years, Alfonso made a habit of keeping her old scripts in her dressing room. “When we’d get new writers, sometimes they weren’t always familiar with the show,” she explained. “And that was one of the reasons I had started saving my scripts, so I could go back and say, “I know you want me to say X, Y, and Z in this long monologue, but this never happened. It doesn’t track. But it tracks on this page and this show, which was 100 shows ago.”
With an audience so devoted, Alfonso felt that altering the character to fit into a particular plot point wasn’t fair to viewers. “The audience is going to remember,” she insisted. “I don’t think I knew it better [than the writers], I just know what I did for my character. There were storylines I did not agree with and the directions that they were taking because it was not honest of who Hope was or what she endured.”
At the end of the day, Reckell chimed in that respecting the audience was paramount, especially now that viewers have to pay to stream the soap on Peacock. “If you’re not respecting, they’ll leave.”
Concluded Alfonso, “It’s all about quality. The history is what it is.”
