Mary Beth Evans may be one of the busiest soap stars around. She’s recently returned to Days Of Our Lives, the soap she joined in 1986 as Kayla Brady. She’s the founder and owner of Mary Beth’s Apple Pie Company, which is still going strong after six years, she’s acting in primetime shows like ABC’s Body of Proof, and web soaps like The Bay and Pretty, and she’s currently starring in the comedy Murder at the Howard Johnson’s, now on stage at Studio C Artists in Los Angeles. Oh, and she’s just finished relandscaping her yard… herself.
The incredibly energetic and upbeat actress, entrepreneur, wife and mom took some time out of her crazy schedule to talk with me about her play, her return to DAYS and what else may be on the horizon now that her youngest child has gone off to college.
Tell us about the play you’re doing Murder at the Howard Johnson’s and the character you play.
I call it a quick fifty minutes to an hour of just a fun farce. It never stops moving, there’s no intermission, which is my favorite kind of play. It takes place in the 1930s and was written in the 1970s. I play Arlene, a woman who has been married for a long time and different events have happened that she grew up and away from her husband. The path of the characters is that at different points they all try to kill each other.
It’s been an incredible blast. I’ve done daytime for such a long time… it’s so fun to take a piece and take it apart and add the layers to it. It’s a solid, funny show, and I’m really proud of it because it was a huge undertaking.
What was it like for you doing comedy after doing soaps and drama?
People always tell me I’m funny and I should do comedy. But I have to keep a lid on it because it would be easy to cross over and be slap-sticky. So I have to be careful not to turn it into a cartoon. It’s just so much fun and it’s a bit physical – I’m running around and being thrown around. Every morning I’m like Ow! Ouch!
John Coppola, the director, is so darn funny. When we met with him, I thought, ‘We’ll never be as funny as he is,’ but I think eventually we did implement things that he was happy with. Everyone always says, ‘You do soaps so memorizing must be easy.’ It’s easy because you know your soap character so well, it’s conversational. The scene lasts two pages so you can retain that. This play is sixty-some pages with all three of us on the set the whole time. There is so much dialogue! That was a challenge. It took me a month to learn this. We rehearsed for six or eight weeks. At one point I was thinking, ‘I can’t believe how difficult this is!’ A year ago I did another one act play, and it’s a lot work. But I think it’s so important, especially as we get older, to keep challenging ourselves to do things that scare us. Now we all get together once a week just to run through it, and we are always right on. So now that I have it all in my head, it might be there for the rest of my life!
What has been the response to the show?
Sometimes when I do these things I don’t always know if I want anyone to see it. I go into it for myself and my own personal growth. I did a play last year where I didn’t even tell my husband when opening night was and then the day before he was like, ‘Were you going to tell me opening night is tomorrow!?’ But with this show, I sent out emails to everyone and told people to come and see it. My husband has come to the show three times. I think he could play a part himself!
The other thing I think is interesting is my 18-year-old son… last Thanksgiving, we went to New York, we go there every year because that’s where my mother-in-law lives. So I thought it would be good to go to New York City and give the kids an appreciation for theater, for dramas. I took my son to see a play and afterward I asked him, ‘So what’d you think?’ He said, ‘Oh god, too negative.’
But he came to opening night [of Murder at the Howard Johnson’s] with four friends he plays water polo with in college. They sat in the front row and they loved it. They even told their parents how much they loved it. I had a poster at my house that someone had given me and my son asked, ‘Can I put that up at school?’ So I think it’s a great testimony that it reaches all ages.
You’re coming back to DAYS, have you started shooting yet?
Well, I’m back but they’re so far ahead that I’m not airing until December. They have a lot on their plate right now with trying to get everyone back and reinvent some things on the show. It’s nice that everyone is feeling so upbeat and positive about the show. I’ve always thought what fans want to see is heartfelt stories and love stories and they’re trying to get back to that. I think people really appreciate that it’s more about generations and families. My mother watches and she says, ‘There’s enough going on in the world, we don’t need it on our daytime TV shows. We want to lose ourselves.’
I can tell you there’s a great vibe on the set. [DAYS co-executive producer] Noel Maxam who came in with Ed Scott, he really works to make the scenes better, which I really appreciate because it’s such a quick moving medium.
Can you give us any teasers or tell us what Kayla will be up to when she returns to Salem?
She’s there to help her mother Caroline at the pub, clean it up a bit, maybe make it more modern. Kayla will be hanging out with the men of the show, being their ear. I honestly don’t know which way it’s going. As long as I’ve been with the show, they never tell you in advance what’s going to happen. I just know they’re gearing it more toward love and family and that’s what the fans want.