DOOL Exclusive: On Her Maggie-versary, Suzanne Rogers Reveals the Difficult Story That Left Her Fighting the Writers Every Step of the Way
Suzanne Rogers proudly stepped on the Days of Our Lives soundstage 51 years ago this week — and Salem has never looked the same since! Maggie Horton is an icon in the daytime television landscape: loyal, family-oriented, strong, stubborn, and full of grace. Portraying the same character for over five decades speaks volumes about Rogers’ talent because she has a hidden secret to her soap opera success.
She admits to Soaps.com that she is “still nervous” when she arrives on set each day. “The nerves give me a sense of, ‘OK, I don’t know what’s going to happen.’
I’m always on my toes because I think you need to be nervous,” Rogers explains. “You need to have that energy, the energy from the nerves. It fuels me, it fuels me, yes, absolutely!”
Rogers is ready to go any day she’s on set, but there was one recent storyline that fired her up. “Well, the one with Konstantin.
That’s the one that I felt didn’t serve the character,” she reveals. “It was hard for me to come into work and to pretend that I was attracted to this man or maybe falling in love with him.”
Rogers believed it was “too soon” for Maggie to be embarking on a new romance because “she just lost the love of her life” after the death of Victor.
She continues, “Now you’re bringing this character in who is a little aggressive. And I felt he was too aggressive. And Maggie is no withering violet.”
Rogers divulges that she “wasn’t thrilled about the character at all because I love Victor, and all of a sudden, [Konstantin] was trying to take Victor’s place.”
Her dedication to Maggie and her storyline is tried and true, and that’s why Rogers “kept fighting [the writers]” about the path they were paving for Maggie.
“I kept saying, with the scripts, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. She just lost the love of her life.’ And they said, ‘You know, this is the script. Do the script.’
So, yes, it was hard,” she reflects. Days of Our Lives fans have Xander to thank for getting Konstantin out of Maggie’s life for good.
And Rogers gave us the final hilarious word on Konstantin, “He kept bringing her gifts, and then she found out a lot of them were from bargain basement sales and whatever. Honey, [Maggie’s] not bargain basement. No way, honey. Nope!”
