AKETRA SEVILLIAN ON DAYS EXIT

Aketra Sevillian (ex-Talia) had heard rumblings about budget and cast cuts before she became one of the casualties at DAYS. “Everyone was kind of on edge and wondering, ‘Is it me?’ ” the actress recounts. “Raven [Bowens, Chanel], Carson [Boatman, Johnny] and I were all in a room talking, as we normally did. We were nervous about who it would be.”

Then Sevillian got summoned to former co-executive producer Albert Alarr’s office. “I felt very competent in my character and how I had been performing, but I was like, ‘Oh, shoot,’ ” she shares. “You could be doing great, but it’s like passing by a police officer. You know you’re going the speed limit, but you’re still looking over your shoulder, because you want to make sure you’re not getting pulled over. I got nervous, but [getting cut] was the last thing I thought was going to happen.”

Unfortunately, Sevillian was wrong. “It was very respectful, when he sat me down,” she continues, noting that Alarr explained that it had nothing to with her work, but that she was simply a casualty of cost-cutting measures. “And I was the newest on the show, so I had to be let go. My story had to be let go at the moment. They weren’t going to kill me or anything, and I could come back whenever the budget [increased].”

Despite the positive pink slip packaging, “obviously nobody wants to be told that,” contends Sevillian, whose alter ego went to California last week. “She was getting a little overwhelmed with what was happening in Salem. It was a lot for her to bear. So she’s going back to her stomping grounds where she felt the most comfortable.”