Days of Our Lives Star Drake Hogestyn was able to approve and film the way his beloved character died on the Peacock soap before he passed away on Sept. 28.
In a new interview, Executive Producer Ken Corday said he needed to explain to viewers why Hogestyn’s character, John Black, was gone from the drama for nine months. Off-camera, Hogestyn was battling pancreatic cancer.
“We were rolling the dice, because it’s difficult to tell a story of someone’s death or a character’s death while the actor is still alive; albeit [Drake] was fighting, like a tiger, a very difficult disease,” Corday told Soap Opera Digest. “And I made the choice to, ‘Okay, let’s tell the story.’”
“He and I were in contact,” continued Corday. “I wanted to make sure Drake signed off on this, and he was totally in favor of it. He trusted me. Had Drake, God willing, beaten this, he would’ve come back, and it would’ve been something different. But [the story] had to be told. It was extremely difficult and painful for us to tell it — for the cast, for everybody. Drake was a big part of the show. The consummate actor. Always a team player and pretty good-looking, too.”
DOOL star Deidre Hall also told Soap Opera Digest that while the series filmed John’s death and funeral, she refused to let her personal grief over Hogestyn’s health impact her performance. “Drake was still with us,” she told the outlet. “I know Ken had promised him a place to come back. He was looking forward to coming back, and he was fighting the good fight. So we had not said good-bye to him yet. And we weren’t thinking good-bye to him at that point.”
Hogestyn died a day shy of his 71st birthday. He first began playing John Black in 1986, with a hiatus from 2009-2011, upon which he returned to the fan-favorite character until his death.
Recently, Hall revealed to People that “lovely tribute shows” have been filmed to honor her former co-star.
“It is a family-run show and it’s a family-produced show and that’s reflected in everything that we do,” she said. “We bring Christmas to people that don’t have one. We bring Thanksgiving to people that don’t have family. We are there and when we lose a family member, you share it with us. We’ve lost Bill [Hayes], we’ve lost Drake. You’ll share that with us. That’s, I think, comforting for the audience to know that they are part of that legacy and part of that future.”
