DAYS: EMILY O'BRIEN TAKES OVER AS THERESA

After three-and-a-half years of playing DAYS’s Gwen Rizczech, Emily O’Brien was tossed a curveball: She would now be playing a new role, Theresa Donovan.

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“I didn’t know how to feel about it,” admits the actress. “I’d never ever stepped into somebody’s shoes as a recast before. I knew nothing about it. So I was watching [Jen Lilley, ex-Theresa] thinking, ‘How am I going to do this? I’m nothing like Jen, and she’s had this role for five years. How am I going to step in and do this justice? The fans are going to just hate me.’ But, at the end of the day, I’m an actor who was given a part. And I had heard that Jen was unavailable and could only do [the show] for X amount of weeks.”

Lilley graciously offered help to the actress as she got familiar in her new part. “She said, ‘I’m here if you need any information and backstory,’ ” reports O’Brien, who soon realized there were similarities between her former alter ego and the one she’d be taking over, namely that both characters had a penchant for causing trouble. “Because Theresa is kind of on the dark side of things the same as Gwen, it works in that aspect, but still it’s pretty different,” she notes. “The only thing I know is I am not Jen Lilley. I don’t look like Jen Lilley. I don’t sound like her. I cannot be her. All I can do is play the role of Theresa the way that I feel is the right way for me and that fits for me. I have not sought out to emulate Jen or be her in any way. I’m just trying to be the best representation possible through my view. I hope that that translates. I hope that the fans don’t throw rocks at me, which I’m prepared for, because I’m stepping into a role that has been around for a very long time. I know the fans liked her. I hope they don’t look at me as coming in and stealing her role, which is absolutely not what happened.”