Suzanne Rogers' (Maggie Horton) New Days Plot

[Brian Damage]

Suzanne Rogers is about to get a story line on Days of Our Lives that hits close to home. Maybe too close. Come March, her character, Maggie Horton, will be diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, a treatable but incurable neuromuscular disease that Rogers—a former Radio City Rockette—contracted in real life back in the mid-1980s. At the time, Days also gave the disease to Maggie to explain Rogers’ shocking appearance, which included considerable weight gain and facial bloating due to her medication. Rogers has been in remission for several years. The same goes for Maggie—until now. TV Guide Magazine spoke with the Emmy-winning Rogers about this surprising development.

It was you who pushed to have Maggie diagnosed with MG the first time. How do you feel about this second go-round?
When I heard they were bringing back Maggie’s myasthenia I was very hesitant because it’s an aspect of my life I don’t like revisiting. Of course, I’m thankful for the work, and for the opportunity to get the message out once again. But there’s a part of me that’s very nervous about this. Of course, they’re dealing with it in a different way this time. Before, Days decided to deal with it because I was dealing with it, and I looked very different from the neck up. This time, Maggie will be affected in the arms and the limbs. That’s another way people can get MG, or you can get it all over from head to foot. It’s a crapshoot as to what you get. I was lucky that the kind I got was not a degenerative one. Thank God.

Stress is considered one of the triggers of MG, right?
Oh, yes. And, Lord knows, Maggie’s had a lot of that recently! Her husband, Mickey, suddenly died. Her beloved Melanie [is about to] get shot. It’s been more than she can take. But I think—I hope!—she’s going to pull through this newest crisis. She always does. Stress is what brought it on for me. It came at a time when I was over 35 and dealing with that whole age stigma. Days was turning away those of us who’d been on the show for a while, and focusing on the new and the young. I was also going through a divorce at the time. Too much stress!

Is this recurrence of Maggie’s MG a good idea? You’ve become so vital on the show recently. This sounds like it could bring that to a halt.
Notoriously, the audience does not like [to watch] illness. I’m not sure where this is headed. I had a little talk with [Days exec producer] Gary Tomlin and he told me this is not going to be a myasthenia gravis storyline, per se. Maggie will be having symptoms that come and go.

Then what’s the point of this, dramatically speaking?
I think it’s basically so that Melanie and Philip will move back into the house with Maggie, which keeps her involved in their lives and vice versa. The kids don’t want Maggie to be by herself. I guess it’ll help her get through this first year of widowhood. I’m just surmising.

Does this mean Mel and Philip’s toxic in-laws will be showing up at Maggie’s house? The last thing you need when you’re trying to avoid stress is a visit from that nutburger Vivian [Louise Sorel]!
[Laughs] And you just know she’ll be dropping by! She thinks Philip is all hers.

Are you concerned about leaving this MG plot at work?
I can’t allow myself to take it home. That would just be too painful. I’m going to have to be an actress about it. It’ll help that the new symptoms are different from mine. It’ll be like playing an alcoholic when you’re not one.

You’ve been in remission since 1995. How often do you even think about MG these days?
Well, it’s always there but I don’t mention it much anymore. I don’t think about it every day anymore. When I see someone on TV being diagnosed with something, it pops back into my mind. And I’m always looking for outlets to help me deal with stress—cooking or exercising, playing with the animals or taking my mom out shopping. Anything to get beyond the stress and not let it fester. And you’ve known me a long time. I’m very religious. I prayed a lot when I got this disease. And I had a lot of people praying for me, as well. That’s not to say that’s what helped me through it, but my believing that it was going to help did help.

There are some fascinating studies being done on the power of prayer—in fact, the success statistics are throwing scientists for a loop. It would be interesting if Days took a spiritual route with this story. God tends to be off-limits on the soaps except for when you need to deliver a big dramatic monologue in the hospital chapel when somebody’s dying.
When I first got the symptoms, I went to eight or nine doctors and no one knew what I had. They’d say it’s not this, it’s not that. But what is it? I went to church and got up in the first pew—it was a weekday, nobody else was there—and I knelt down and said, “Please put a name on it, God, so that they can work on it, or cure it, or give me pills for it. Please name it.” I made promises to God that day, and to this day I still keep those promises. I think that’s how we have to do things. How rude of us to think we do these things all by ourselves, you know? [Laughs] Well, that’s my little bag o’ wind for today!

Let’s clear up a couple of things. What was the point of having Mickey drop dead?
I was stunned by that decision. They didn’t want to recast the role, so they needed to tie up that loose end. In the scripts, we kept talking about Mickey being out of town, or being in trial. He was always somewhere else. The audience that’s watched us a while knew who Mickey was, but the new viewers didn’t know who the devil we were talking about. It was hard, because John Clarke [the original Mickey] is still very much alive and well. I called him and said “I hope I do you proud.” There was one good thing about it—we could use those great old Mickey-and-Maggie flashbacks, because in later years when they recast the role with John Ingle, and then Kevin Dobson, we couldn’t go back and use any of my scenes with John. By removing the character from the page, we were able to go into the archives and pull out some really glorious stuff.

And what’s up with Maggie’s near-return to boozing? For a few episodes there, it looked like she was so torn up about Mickey’s death that she was heading back to the bottle. Then the story was abruptly aborted.
I think they might have gone ahead with it if they’d kept Lucas [Bryan Dattilo] around. Maggie was his AA sponsor, so it would have been a great story for him to have to pull himself out of all his Lucas craziness and help her for a change. At least, I thought that’s where the story was going, and then all of a sudden it wasn’t. You kind of learn to go with the punches.

It’s been so gratifying to see Maggie become the go-to gal when the young ones in Salem need some good common sense.
Isn’t it wonderful? I’m suddenly the woman in the shoe—I have so many children I don’t know what to do! Please notice that I didn’t put the “old” in there! The first time Nathan called me “Grandma” on the show I went, “Whaaat? That can’t be!” [Laughs] But then I realized he was right. I think Maggie and Lucas had a great dynamic. He needed someone to read him the riot act. Nobody had ever done that! Hell-ooo… we need more of that on the show! Right from wrong. Soaps used to care about that sort of thing.

To what do you credit your survival on Days? Not only did you escape the big purge of veterans in 2008, the writers have been showcasing you like crazy for the last year.
I never thought I’d still be here when Deidre Hall [Marlena] and Drake Hogestyn [John] and Mary Beth Evans [Kayla] and Stephen Nichols [Patch] are all gone! I was shocked by that. And it was the biggest surprise that they found me again because I’d always been here, lurking in the background. Gary Tomlin came in as producer and immediately said, “Why aren’t you working?” Now I feel like we’ve turned back the clock 30 years and I’m wanted again! I don’t know how this happened, but isn’t it lovely? You know, when you don’t work and use your gift for a while, you wonder, gee, is it still there? Do I still have it? Can I still tap into it? You can’t help but have that fear, but I’m glad to say it all came back. [Laughs] I can’t kick as high as I used to, but I can still kick butt!

http://www.tvguidemagazine.com/soaps...plot-3994.html

[catlover79]

It will be great to see Suzanne Rogers get a very meaty story as well as educate the public about a disease a lot of people may not know anything about.

[SueAnn_Rose]

Knowing that I wasn't even into soaps and was either not born yet or too young to know. This is a great storyline for her, she's been through so much the last month that giving her a big storyline would be great cause she is an amazing actress and she's one of my favorite characters.