Character Building

Soaps’ head writers reveal the how-tos of adding new faces to the canvas

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In what may be an attempt to explain why new faces often appear on soaps, there’s an urban legend that head writers make money for every character they create. “It is absolutely 100 percent untrue,” declares DAYS’s head writer, Ron Carlivati. “A, I don’t know where that money would come from, and B, why would that system exist? I’d just be like, ‘Ken [Corday, executive producer], here’s 10 characters. Where’s my money?’ It’s absolutely absurd. In fact, I have to fight to get a new character. If there was some system back in the day where you owned a piece of this character you created, I don’t know, but trust me, if it existed, it hasn’t existed for 25 years. There’s no money for me to be had making up somebody new.”

But the scribe understands why fans are suspect when new people appear in their soap towns. “The audience is always going to be leery of a new character,” he concedes. “They have the characters that they know and love and some new character comes in and they’re like, ‘Who are you? What are you doing?’ My philosophy has always been, respect the history of the show and play with the characters that you have. I made a point when I first got to the show [in 2017] that I would not create any new characters for months and would play with the toys that I have.”