Paulina had enough to handle on Days of Our Lives this week without reality falling apart. EJ took her into that lab, revealed Lexie alive in the tube, and basically told her to choose between the law and a miracle. It was cruel, manipulative, and very EJ, which left Paulina shaken for reasons that had nothing to do with his bedside manner, assuming he has one. Off-screen, though, Jackée Harry discussed a very different kind of pressure when she opened up about a behind-the-scenes mix-up that could have gone badly but somehow didn’t.
Key Takeaways
- Jackée Harry said the fast pace of DAYS was difficult to adjust to at first.
- She recalled missing a scene because she did not yet understand the show’s schedule.
- The scene was about 12 pages long, and she had to perform it on the spot.
- Harry said she did not panic and relied on her training to get through it.
- She also stressed professionalism and described soaps as the best training for actors.
When the Schedule Fought Back
Harry appeared on Soapy and, in the middle of a broad conversation about soaps, comedy, mentorship, and surviving in this business with your dignity mostly intact, she shared a story from her early DAYS days. The pace overwhelmed her at first. She said the schedule was hard to understand. Deidre Hall tried to help her figure it out, but she still missed a scene. Then someone suddenly told her, “This is your scene.”
What made the story funnier was that the scene wasn’t some tiny little pickup. It was about 12 pages long, and Harry had to do it right then and there. She admitted she was mortified because the mistake stemmed from not yet understanding how the DAYS machine worked, not from being unprepared overall.
Still, she didn’t give up. She pushed through it, showing that training kicked in before panic could take hold. That was the real message of the story: For Harry, the save wasn’t magic. It was skill. (Find out how Harry explained Paulina’s season of joy.)
Her Best Training
Harry explained it clearly: “I didn’t freak out.” That line reveals a lot about why she has lasted this long. Not because she never gets thrown, but because she knows how to compensate and correct course when the ground shifts.
The interview also provided a nice glimpse into her view of the work. She discussed professionalism, knowing your boundaries, being punctual, and taking soaps seriously even when others don’t. At one point, she even called the format “your best training,” which honestly is hard to argue after that story.
And if anyone needed proof that Harry still approaches the job like a pro, there it was: one missed call, one pile of pages, and one actor who chose to do the work instead of collapse into theatrical despair. Which, to be fair, Paulina probably would have been entitled to this week.
