R.I.P., Arleen Sorkin: Days of Our Lives Vet John de Lancie Reflects on a ‘Match Made in Heaven’ (Exclusive)
John de Lancie is known the galaxy over as Star Trek‘s omnipotent Q, but it’s his actual breakout role in the mid-80s as eccentric inventor/psychic Eugene Bradford on Days of Our Lives that sparks some of his most joyous career memories. And that was largely, if not completely, due to his partnership with leading lady/comedic foil Arleen Sorkin.
Speaking to TVLine in the wake of Sorkin’s death last week at age 67, de Lancie exalts, “I never had more fun acting than with Arleen on Days of Our Lives,” adding, “Over the last 40 years, I’ve been reminded nearly every week by someone coming up to me and telling me how much they enjoyed the two of us [as] Calliope and Eugene. We were a team and we laughed. We laughed a lot. I will miss her always.”
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Dubbed “TV’s zaniest couple” in 1985 by Soap Opera Digest, Eugene and Calliope infused Days — and the melodramatic soap genre as a whole — with some desperately needed comic relief.
“I think we were very lucky to have been able to pull off the antics that we did,” de Lancie shares. “[Then-exec producer] Al Rabin [was a] class clown and saw in me a kindred spirit when I first came to work at Days [in 1982]. It was to be a one-week stint. They wanted a psychopath but, after looking at the show, I came to the conclusion that they needed a comedian. My one-week gig turned into a few months and then Arleen came along. [It was] a match made in heaven.
“For three years our only note from Al was ‘faster and funnier,’” de Lancie continues. “We had the best of times.”
De Lancie says he is often asked to share acting stories from his vast career, which also includes stints on Stargate SG-1, The West Wing, Breaking Bad and Torchwood. “The best stories,” he maintains, “are the ones from Days with Arleen.”
Read on as de Lancie shares a few of those tales…
R.I.P., ROMAN BRADY | “We arrived on set [one morning] at 6 and the producers were standing there waiting for us with a message: ‘Roman is dead today. And it’s not funny!'”
THE 1984 PLANE CRASH STORYLINE | “As you might expect in a soap opera, the plane took about two weeks to fall out of the sky. For some inexplicable reason everyone from Salem was on that plane. And everyone was acting at a level of soap opera hysteria rarely seen in the real world. But, in the actor’s defense, two weeks of ‘we’re crashing, we crashing’ is a bit over the top. On one of those days I looked at Arleen — with a big smile on my face — and yelled, ‘We’re crashing, we’re crashing. Put your head between your legs!’ Arleen gave me a wink — dropped out of frame — I threw my head back in the chair and said, ‘Between your own legs, Calliope!’ That got us sent up to the principal — [then-NBC boss] Brandon Tartikoff. Who told us, ‘You guys are very funny but you’re killing me. De Lancie, when you first came on the show, we had one blue haired censor who showed up once a week. Now, with Arleen, we have two censors on all your scenes and you’re still getting stuff out there. You’re not doing daytime, you’re not doing prime time, you’re doing a 2:30 in the morning blue time. It’s got to stop!'”
The Hotel Sequence | “The scene had Arleen and me in a hotel. I don’t even remember what the scene was about except that it was boring. So we decided to mix things up a bit. We set the scene as a ‘morning after’ event with a pile of our clothes on the floor and the two of us in bed. We asked to have one of the extras come in as ‘the maid’ and pick up our clothes and walk out… The camera then finds us under the sheets, with my head at Arleen’s feet. We both ‘wake up’ and discover that our clothes are gone. Oh, and did I say, we decided to do the scene naked? We then gingerly stand up in bed — Arleen struggling to wrap herself in the sheet and me placing two pillows around my privates. All this time we rattled off the dialogue as written, which of course had nothing to do with our circumstances. To make things even more ridiculous, we decided — for some reason — that we couldn’t simply go out into the hall or call room service but rather that we’d make our way to another room by climbing out the window. It was totally insane. And so much fun.”
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