Photo Credit: JPI Studios Days of Our Lives’ Victoria Konefal says the pace of soaps leaves little room to pause or reset between scenes.

We haven’t seen Ciara much lately on Days of our Lives, which is a strange thing in itself considering how often the Brady chaos seems to bend around her family. With Bo alive but still caught in another wave of crisis, and Hope pulled right back into that orbit, Ciara’s absence has had its own kind of weight. So hearing Victoria Konefal talk about the grind of soap work hits a little differently right now, especially when she gets into just how brutal that schedule really is and why doing a movie felt almost suspiciously slow by comparison.

Key Takeaways

• Victoria Konefal said soap work can run from early morning to evening with little downtime.
• She described handling up to 80 pages of dialogue in a single day.
• Scripts often arrive only a few days before filming.
• Film work gave her more time to develop character and collaborate.
• Downtime on a movie set felt unusual compared to soaps.

This Is Where Acting Turns Into Endurance

Konefal was interviewed by Newsweek, and when the subject turned to DAYS, she didn’t dress any of it up. “It’s like 5 to 5 sometimes,” she explained, which already shows this is not one of those cushy actor stories where someone complains about craft services and calls it hardship. She described early call times, hair and makeup before sunrise, blocking by 7:30, and the kind of weekly pace that never really lets your brain sit down.

Then she got to the part that makes soap work sound less like acting and more like competitive endurance with lip gloss. She explained: “I remember the heaviest dialogue day I had was like an 80-page day. 80 pages of memorization and performance.”

She further noted that the actors generally don’t receive their scripts until “a couple of days before we shoot. So, it’s just a lot of mental work.” That is your frontal lobe being mugged in a parking garage. And that’s her point: people love to treat soaps like the easier lane of television, which they’re not. (Check out Konefal’s amazing milestone.)

Why the Slower Pace Felt Almost Unreal

What stood out was how different movie work felt to her after that. On the set of Scared to Death, Konefal said she actually had time to shape the character, sit with scenes, and build things out with her co-stars. For someone used to the soap machine, that kind of breathing room probably felt illegal.

She talked about having downtime, which on a soap almost sounds made up, like a mythical creature or a Salem citizen with healthy boundaries. She also mentioned that working with actor BJ Miner helped shape her character because they already had chemistry and could develop it naturally instead of forcing it in the moment.

That’s what makes soap acting a different beast. It doesn’t always give you the luxury of deep preparation or endless takes. It asks you to trust your instincts, move fast, and still make it feel lived in. Konefal didn’t oversell it. She didn’t have to. The schedule did that for her.