Peter Brash and Paula Cwikly

Interview with Days of Our Lives Head Writers

Soap Opera Digest recently conducted an interview with Days of Our Lives head writers, Peter Brash and Paula Cwikly.

Dateline: 04/30/02

Last December, Days of Our Lives's Peter Brash and Paula Cwikly were promoted from staff writers to head writers after Tom Langan was axed. Here, they share their thoughts about soaps, cast changes and the Internet.

Digest: How long have you been watching the show?

Paula Cwikly: Probably for 25 years.

Peter Brash: She remembers, too. She's like my encyclopedia.

Cwikly: I started watching in late grade school. I'm not that old, but there still weren't VCRs when I was in grade school and junior high. I do have lapses, because I would have to go to school. Growing up in a little town outside of Pittsburgh, PA, no one I knew even worked in a movie theater - forget about the entertainment business - and I just fell in love with this soap opera thing. It never ended - and there weren't even remote controls back then! I would literally sit in front of the TV so I could watch multiple shows at the same time and switch back and forth. I was in junior high, and my mother came home from work and said, "We spent all that money to put a pool in the backyard and you sit and watch soap operas all day." I did. I watched The Secret Storm and Search for Tomorrow, Love of Life and General Hospital. GH and Guiding Light were both on at 3 o' clock and that was the big back and forth. Totally the Luke and Laura stuff. When I was younger, I thought "I want to do this," but that was really, "I want to write a soap opera for a living." I didn't know how to get there and the fact that I'm doing it. When I got my first writing job, that was amazing, but this is beyond amazing.

Brash: You do, Paula, bring a lot to the table. I've worked with a lot of writers, almost every writer in the business at one time or another. Paula brings for me the encyclopedic knowledge of soap opera and storytelling, that to me is a blessing, because it's a resource. Especially for our show, because she knows so much about it. The writing is just written off. The best writers steal, like Shakespeare, we're always finding scenes and moments... we steal from everything. We’re also frustrated musical comedy writers. There are a lot of songs in our scenes that are just not sung.

Digest: Are there any characters you want to bring back?

Brash: It came down to all of us pitching ideas and it was kind of like a laundry list, because DAYS has such a rich history and wonderful characters in the past who can resurface.

Cwikly: Also being careful not to bring someone back at the expense of someone else. And not being able to tell a story for everyone the way it should be told... that was a consideration, too. I guess what we're saying, we had a wish list and maybe [Executive Producers] Ken [Corday] and Steve [Wyman] brought to that wish list, too. We kind of brought it all together and prioritized. A lot of it, a lot of our long term story for the fall is waiting on certain contract negotiations and whether this character is going to remain with us. Those things we can't talk about... we tend to bite our fingernails and hope a lot.

Digest: Will you be making other cast changes?

Cwikly: Sometimes, through no fault of anybody, somebody chooses to move on. It makes me crazy to read in a magazine or on the Internet or whatever, on whatever soap opera, "You should've done anything to keep this character." You know what? We did. I've said this to fans and they've said, "I've never thought about it that way." What if you're in a job and I say to you, "You can never leave that job. If there's a promotion, there's another opportunity, you can never leave the job you have right now for the rest of your lives. What would you say to me?" That's what this is to these people - it's their job. Maybe they want a new challenge, maybe they want to work for a different company, maybe they want to change careers. There are times when there's nothing we can do to keep somebody. If they come to you and they say, "I don't want to act anymore," or "I want to do this, I want to try this opportunity," we can't tie them up and put them in a closet.

Brash: We can't? [laughs]

Digest: Do you pay attention to the Internet?

Cwikly: We get a kick out of it.

Brash: What's surprising is that a lot of the stuff we see in the Internet, we were thinking of anyway. We kind of wink of each other and say "Oh wow, they're on to us," or "Oh, wow, won't they be surprised." Or, "Oh, if that's what you want, you'd better stay tuned, because you might see that and then something else." It's interesting. You also sometimes read some things... it's an anonymous venue and you read things that make you wince sometimes. It's okay. It's a free country and I think that's a great thing about soap operas. Everyone has a say and everybody has a take and like Paula said, you can't please all the people all the time, so we're gonna tick them off.

Cwikly: I have those moments where if I didn't have any self control, my fingers would fly on that keyboard. People put stuff on the Internet like it's fact. "I know this is true," and it's so far from being true. I just want to... even if I went on, nobody would believe me. Not that I would do it anyway. I'm sure... the one thing we haven't had yet that will happen is the impersonators on the Internet. We haven't had people go on and say they're us, but that will happen.

Brash: Our stuff just started airing, so we haven't gone on the Internet and seen "That was the worst episode I've ever watched." That might hurt. We hope they'll never say that.