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Driven To Distraction: Fiona (Serena Scott Thomas) panics after hitting Sarah with her vehicle while driving drunk.
An inebriated Fiona panics when she realizes she hit Sarah with her car, leaving her new daughter-in-law alive but in bad shape on Days of our Lives . Serena Scott Thomas, who portrays Fiona, recalls seeing the disturbing scene in her script.
An Awful Accident
The actress reports that her first reaction "was, 'Oh, God. They’re going there.' Obviously, it's horrific in every way. And I know that for me, as a human being, to think about that and be the perpetrator of that is terrible. It's like, 'How do you ever forgive yourself? How?' ”
Seeing Sarah on the ground “is absolutely the worst thing” Fiona can imagine, assesses Scott Thomas. “It’s abject terror. Fiona is trying to build this relationship with her son. She’s trying to prove that she doesn't drink, she's sober and has started a new life, and then the worst possible thing happens. And it happens when she's drunk. So you put that in the mix and the confusion and it’s dark… [She’s thinking], 'I'm this terrible horrible person. But at the same time, I need to save myself. What can I do?' There’s sort of panic.”
Desperate not to get caught, Fiona flees the scene and takes a barely conscious Brady home. “Fiona’s survival instinct kicks in, which is completely wrong, of course,” notes Scott Thomas. “It’s completely immoral and just bad in every way. Yet it just goes to show the insanity of the disease of alcoholism. People who would normally know how to behave and what the right thing to do is behave completely contrary and do things that are completely out of character fueled by alcohol. It's like a switch is turned in the head. It's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
Meanwhile, Xander finds Sarah at the accident site, calls for an ambulance, and accompanies his bride to the hospital. As Kayla tends to Sarah, Xander phones his mother. Once Fiona arrives, Xander explains that Sarah was struck by a hit-and-run driver, and a guilt-ridden Fiona comforts her son.
“She’s feeling beyond awful, sick to her stomach,” recounts Scott Thomas, admitting that Fiona is feeling completely torn, because “her love for her son and her desire to have a good relationship with him, Sarah, Maggie and Victoria is absolutely genuine. She needs it. She needs it like air. Her years in Europe have been extremely lonely, so she desperately wants to feel a part of a family. She wants to have a home and a family and be cozy and safe.”
So despite having caused this horrible situation, Fiona wants to be there for and comfort her son . “Of course,” insists Scott Thomas. “There's this awful sort of fight of this love for her son, the desire to be a good mother and to help him, and the hope that Sarah is okay. But there’s also [this feeling of] maybe she'll be found and, 'Oh my God. How can I not tell them the truth?' It is just the worst. The worst. I mean, I'm clutching my head as I'm speaking to you.”
Across town, John and Marlena discover Brady’s car in the wrong parking spot — with him unconscious inside it. He later calls Fiona to ask what happened the night before, and she lies that Brady drove himself home. But is this the only thing Fiona will be lying about moving forward?
Whatever happens next, Scott Thomas explains that it’s driven by “alcohol and distorted thinking. I worked with Harry Fine, a very brilliant acting coach in Hollywood. He used to say, ‘We're never more brilliant than when we're justifying our own bad behavior.’ And I think that this would've been one of those moments.”
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