MYSTERY THEATER

Who killed DAYS’s Charlie? Head Writer Ron Carlivati has the scoop.

- Stephanie Sloane

Soap Opera Digest: Let’s start at the beginning. Was it always the plan to kill off Charlie?

Ron Carlivati: Yes. Oftentimes, we start stories not knowing where they’re going to end up, but this is a case of once we conceived the idea of who was the father of Allie’s baby and who raped Allie, that this character would ultimately be killed for it. So that was part of the whole pitch, that Tripp would be implicated and then there would be this long-lost brother and then he would start to date Claire and in the end, he would be exposed and ultimately killed because I felt that he was not really redeemable as a character and you were not going to root for a rapist, Todd Manning [from ONE LIFE TO LIVE] notwithstanding.

Digest: Mike Manning, who played Charlie, was embraced from the get-go. Did that give you any second thoughts about killing him off?

Carlivati: