While she’s had the unenviable task of replacing a beloved actress in a beloved part (maybe — the jury is still out on that one!) AnnaLynne McCord found some (surprising) common ground with her Days of our Lives alter-ego.
AnnaLynne McCord Talks Parallels With DAYS’ Abigail
“I’ve incorporated some of my own personal life in a lot of these [on-screen] moments,” revealed the actress to Soap Opera Digest. “I speak out a lot about mental health, and I’ve dealt with dissociation, severe dissociation, to the point of having what’s called DID [dissociative identity disorder]. Then I found out that Abigail had that too. I was like, ‘Okay. Abigail and I get each other.’
I was diagnosed with that, and I’m grateful to have reached what’s called fusion, where my parts came back together. But during that time, you’re so numb. I would describe it to people. I’d be like, “I knew something was wrong, but my screen was blank.” That’s what happened. In my mind, my screen would go blank.”
As for how she’s incorporated those elements of her personal struggle into her portrayal: “I brought that into the scenes during the early moments with Chad and Jack and everyone, because the Abigail who can’t remember her life would’ve been a lot the way AnnaLynne was in her life when she couldn’t remember her story. I didn’t remember certain things that had happened to me when I was a child. When I would get into conflict, I would sometimes freeze and everything would go blank.
I’ve incorporated that quite a bit into the early storyline of Abigail’s journey, because I lived it. I give her these quiet moments where you see she has a little bit of anxiety rising. And in the moments where everyone’s there, a lot of times I have her freeze and experience what it’s like to be in dissociation, which is that you don’t really know where you are in space or time.”
On leading man Billy Flynn [Chad DiMera]: “Well, he’s not attractive at all; baby blues don’t do anything for me [laughs]. He’s such a darling human being. He is a delicious gentleman, and we have this mixture that just works. We banter a lot off-screen. I think that that gives the energy on-screen to be that palpable kind of yumminess that you want between love interest characters. And I really appreciate how raw he is…He’s wonderful, and I love working with him.
And on her daytime experience as a whole: “This whole experience has been honestly amazing for me personally. As an actress, it’s wild, because you can have upwards of 25, 30 pages of dialogue a day that you’re learning whenever you’re on. The actors on DAYS and soap operas, in general, are incredible to be able to navigate, learn that many lines, have one take and go. It’s like acting boot camp. The ones that stick it out are the true unsung heroes in my opinion…
“I feel really humbled and honored to be on the 60th season of it. I mean, 60 years is such a feat. Nothing lasts that long in Hollywood. It has stood the test of time. So as an overall experience, it’s just been really rewarding.”
What are you thinking about AnnaLynne McCord’s work thus far? Let us know in the comments section below.
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