Paul Telfer says longer scenes are back at Days of our Lives — and it’s changing everything

On Days of our Lives, Xander Cook is barely keeping himself upright these days — wandering around Salem like a man who hasn’t slept, hasn’t eaten, hasn’t figured out how to breathe right since Sarah (Linsey Godfrey) tore their marriage apart and filed for divorce. He’s circling Brady (Eric Martsolf) who may have feelings for Sarah. And in the middle of all that rubble came something unexpected: Paul Telfer sitting down on The Stone Cold and the Jackal podcast, talking about the show from a place that felt steadier than anything Xander’s managed on-screen.

Inside the New Rhythm Taking Hold at Days of our Lives

Paul Telfer showed up to the podcast relaxed in that post-Emmy glow, trading jokes with General Hospital’s Steve Burton (Jason) and Bradford Anderson (Spinelli) before the conversation drifted into the heartbeat of the show. And when they asked whether he felt a shift in how Days is structured lately, he didn’t dodge it. He said what a lot of actors have been hinting at quietly for years: the scenes are finally stretching out again.

He explained that the post-COVID era left them stuck in clipped rhythms — quick hits, tiny bubbles of story where everyone only crossed into two or three rooms. “They wanted shorter and shorter scenes during that period,” he said, because production needed speed, and health protocols ruled the day. But those habits hung on longer than anyone expected. The show felt scattered, like everyone was acting in their own corner of the world.

Telfer said that the shift is reversing now. “It’s been nice these past couple of years…[we’re starting] to get longer scenes and more interactions. More people interacting in an episode. You know, we're less in our little bubbles now, and I get to work with actors that I don't necessarily get to work with all the time,” he told them. And that opened something bigger — the sense that the characters are part of a real town again, not a series of isolated story pods. “You just feel like you’re part of a town now instead of a single household,” he said, and it landed with the weight of someone who’s lived both versions.

Why those longer scenes matter — and how they’re reshaping Days of our Lives

Once Telfer said it out loud, you could feel the truth of it. The longer scenes are changing the tone of the show — giving arguments space to grow teeth, giving reconciliations room to soften, giving grief that slow, aching crawl that makes the story hit deeper. It’s the difference between watching emotional headlines and actually watching the story unfold.

Instead of being siloed off in the Kiriakis mansion or whatever room Xander was melting down in that week, the scripts now scatter the cast across town in real, lived-in ways. Those cross-currents matter — they’re where chemistry sneaks up on you, where an odd pairing unexpectedly clicks, where the story finds new corners to breathe in.

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And for Telfer specifically — a guy who’s been thrown every shade of heartbreak, violence, comedy, and contrition the show can offer — it means the work feels richer. The scenes aren’t just plot delivery systems anymore; they’re letting him sit in the mess of Xander’s life instead of sprinting through it. And coming from someone who’s been on the front lines of the show’s evolution for more than a decade, that acknowledgment felt like a quiet promise: the deep, character-driven days of Days of our Lives aren’t gone. They’re circling back.

Days of our Lives is available on the Peacock streaming app.

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