Exclusive: Paul Telfer On The Dramatic DAYS Intro Of Xander's Mother, Serena

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The Mother Lode: Paul Telfer (Xander) on the DAYS set with his new Salem mother, Serena Scott Thomas (Fiona).

Xander thinks the day of his wedding to Sarah is going to be the happiest day of his life. But with the secret of his paternity dangling in the air, and with DAYS’s penchant for weddings that are filled with dramatic events, not to mention the fact that Serena Scott Thomas makes her debut as Xander’s mother, Fiona, who could blow up the secret that Xander is Victor’s son, he may well remember his wedding day for all the wrong reasons.

Reversal of Fortune

Paul Telfer (Xander) says that he was thrilled that the show decided to introduce the oft-mentioned Fiona into the Salem mix. “I've been kind of begging for something like this for a long time,” he shares. “I've been wanting to explore Xander's paternity and the family beyond. I always felt like being brought in as the nephew and the black sheep and all of that, it worked for a while, especially as a recurring villain, but now that I'm a more consistent part of the show, it just felt like the actual family relationships, as far as Xander's concerned, are pretty tenuous, especially when nobody seems to like him. The audience tolerates him, but the characters on the show don’t particularly like Xander, and they have good reason not to. But I always felt that maybe that they were seeding the possibility and that he could be Victor’s son, and that there might be some explanation for the peculiar way Victor treated Xander.”

At first, the actor didn’t know that the show was in the process of casting Fiona until after Scott Thomas had nabbed the role. “I typically try not to ask too many questions, and I don't try to read the tea leaves,” he explains. “I try to just play the scripts as they come in because sometimes you can get yourself tied up in knots trying to guess where it's going. I'm sure the audience does the same thing, but for us [actors], I can't make big decisions about how to play things based on what may or may not happen. I just have to deal with what's in front of me. So I don't tend to poke around too much.”

When the actor did eventually catch wind of who DAYS had cast as Fiona, his reaction was, 'Ah, fantastic!' That was a really amazing [bit of news]. It was so exciting."

Telfer was already familiar with Scott Thomas's work. “I saw Serena play Princess Diana in a British miniseries years ago, and so I knew that she was a fantastic actress and I was just so excited that they really got such a fantastic actress who hasn't done daytime before,” Telfer enthuses. “And at first I was just hoping that it would be somebody British. As long as she's British, that's all that really matters for consistency’s sake. But for them to get such an excellent British actress was just really exciting. And then from the moment she showed up, Serena 's just been an absolute dynamo.”

A dynamo who will detonate Xander’s calm-at-present life? That remains to be seen, but Telfer teases that he is “very, very excited” about what’s coming down the pike for Xander, “and really excited for people to see it. I love this storyline.”