The contract has ended but is it over for Manning at Days?
Mike Manning knew that when he was hired on at Days of our Lives “that the contract had an end to it.” Though he didn’t know the nature of how he’d exit, he knew the storyline would be dark. He learned the day after he wrapped filming when the producers told him, “Hey, Mike, we just want you to know that you’ve done a great job with Charlie, and you’ve brought different layers to the character that other actors might not have brought. We’re so impressed with what you’ve done with the character, but with this type of storyline, and because Charlie did such an awful thing to Allie, there’s no way around it. We have to kill him.”
He told Soap Digest, “Given the choice of going out with a whimper or going down in a blaze of glory, you would always choose the blaze of glory. It would be nice if it wasn’t Charlie, but if he’s gotta go, at least make it fun.”
The Days of our Lives rumor mill has been at it, hopeful that Manning would return in another form. In fact, Mike Manning could return as Charlie Dale’s twin brother. According to Soap Opera Digest, Ron Carlivati revealed that it was always the plan to kill Charlie off at the end of his arc since there could be no redemption for him.
“I never thought about changing the story. I always knew that I didn’t want to redeem the rapist; I wanted him to die…” Carlivati did confess that although there’s no excuse for what Charlie did, he tried to give the character a sympathetic backstory where Charlie felt unloved and unwanted by his mother Ava Vitali (Tamara Braun).
The scribe did say that his “heart kind of sank” when he saw how many people liked Charlie early on in the story. He wasn’t willing to deviate from the original plan to kill Charlie off but did say, “And I was already thinking, ‘Well, maybe he’s got a twin brother’.”
Whether he does remains to be seen. We’re still currently trying to figure out who killed Charlie. Visit this suspect list to vote on who you think did it (scroll to the bottom for that), and feel free to leave your opinion on that or anything else that strikes your fancy about the show, including if you’d like to see Manning return.
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