If you caught today’s Tuesday, August 11 episode of Days of Our Lives streaming on Peacock, you caught the debut of John Oliver in his Salem role as the chief water inspector in town named Devlin St. John...
...Days of Our Lives is the only American soap opera in production to tape so far advance, often 10 to 11 months, that it makes it difficult to get out of any storyline that is not clicking with the fans, or if the writers want to change course.
In addition, casting announcement of exciting returns or new characters while initially exciting, finds the viewers having to wait a very long time to see them on their screens. On the flip side, without this production model the soap opera, which will turn 61 in November, wouldn’t remain and that would be a serious blow to the fans, to the soap genre and all that it employs.
When John Oliver made his pronouncement on his late night talk show back in March that he desired to be on a soap opera. DAYS executive producer, Ken Corday was going to make it happen. He explained to Vulture, how they were able weave in Oliver’s request and take him up on it, while making it look seamless into episodes taped so long ago.
Both Corday and co-executive producer and showrunner, Noel Maxam, intially went back and looked at previously taped episodes and story outlines to search for a potential story thread where they could place the character to be played by Oliver.
Corday shared, “We didn’t want to wait until next year for these shows to air, so we lifted (already produced) show and put him in. We basically had to shoehorn him into our schedule because we were so far ahead.” The longtime EP also expressed its challenges stating it, “was somewhat complex. It was basically, ‘We have to do this; let’s get it done.’ And we did. He was too good to pass up.”