As Days of Our Lives’ Fiona Upends ‘Xarah,’ Paul Telfer and Linsey Godfrey Reveal the Emotional Reason the Twists Are Taking Such an Unexpected Toll

Things are about to get heavy for Days of Our Lives‘ Xander and Sarah. Fiona’s arrival has upended their lives in more ways than one. There’s Xander’s estrangement from his mom, the realization that Victor lied to him his whole life, Fiona’s uncertainty that ‘Xarah’ should even marry and now her admission that for a time, she’d been institutionalized. Not that Xander believes her.

But it’s going to get much more emotional Linsey Godfrey and Paul Telfer warn Soaps.com. And there’s some good and some bad to that.

“I’m excited,” Godfrey enthused, “just because this work that everybody’s gonna get to see Paul do is just such beautiful work.”

While Godfrey admitted she’s not big on talking about “the process” of acting (“I think it’s really just so self indulgent”), she did want to walk through what she and Telfer went through for the Fiona storyline. Because, as she shared, “We were in this very unique situation where both of our past traumas were being played out on the show. The process that Paul and I went through for some of these scenes, just being in the trenches like that with somebody… We already are best friends, but I feel like what we went through, we just had to lean on each other.”

They relied on each other, trusted each other and pushed through as best they could, while happily singing praises for each other’s performances. Fiona’s going to be tearing open a lot of wounds for both Sarah and Xander. Sometimes, though, that’s what’s needed to heal.

“I learned so much off of Lindsay,” Telfer shared, “and how to achieve certain emotions very rapidly. They’re crazy soapy storylines that we’re doing, but they both rhyme with our actual real lives — like very specific things from our past.”

“Both of us,” Godfrey pointed out, saying they didn’t “realize how much that was going to hit home for us. So it was really wanting to be there for each other. Just being like, ‘OK, I know this hits home,’ and ‘This is very close to home for you.’”

With that said, Telfer wryly chuckles that, “We weren’t super happy about it at first. Sometimes you’re like, ‘Wait, did they… How did they know?’ So some of it, for it to be so on the nose, it was just a bit like, ‘Who have you been talking to?!’”

Both Telfer and Godfrey can laugh a bit about it now, but it wasn’t easy at the time, he admits. “There’s that first moment of, ‘There’s no escape here. I cannot do a bad job with this.’”

Of course, the “missing piece” in making the story work, Telfer points out, is Serena Scott Thomas’ performance as Fiona. She came in, thrilled to be a part of the show and the storyline. And as Godfrey says, they all bonded immediately. Scott Thomas echoed that sentiment in saying she couldn’t have been happier to work with both actors and felt a bond with Telfer right off the bat.

Ultimately, the environment they worked in made a big difference, Godfrey shared. “Everyone was so supportive. It wasn’t just each other. We also had producers and directors that were being very understanding and supportive. We have some really good story coming up for the whole show.”