Practically 20 years after his final cleaning soap look, Michael Dietz will seem on Days of Our Lives starting April 30 for a brief arc as Dr. Jeffrey Russell, who’s engaged on a miracle drug.
Dietz began his daytime profession on Port Charles as Joe Scanlon in 1997 however has since moved behind the scenes as a producer of actuality tv, so aside from a short look on 9-1-1 in 2022, performing hasn’t been on his radar. In consequence, the concept of stepping again in entrance of the digicam was considerably daunting.
“For the final, 15 years, since my cleaning soap days, I’ve had a recurring dream most likely as soon as each couple of months, that I’m on a set and I utterly neglect my line, and I’m pulling up the script, and it’s a minute earlier than the scene, and I’m panicking,” Michael Dietz says. “So, after I mentioned sure, I began going, ‘Oh, no. Am I going to have the ability to be taught my traces?’ I jumped in as rapidly as doable into the scripts after I received them, and all of it got here again, however I used to be nonetheless very nervous.”
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Getting a heat welcome from the forged offered reassurance, as did seeing a well-known face within the studio. “The best pleasure is I went in and, in fact, everyone was past beautiful,” Dietz reviews. “And after I received on set, Scott [McKinsey], the director, got here out, and he was one in every of my final administrators I labored with on Port Charles. He gave me a giant hug, and I mentioned, ‘I’m just a little nervous.’ I had my scene with Mary Beth [Evans, Kayla Johnson], and he or she was so beautiful. After, Scott mentioned one thing over the speaker on the stage, like, ‘Welcome dwelling, pal.’ Then all of it form of melted away.”
That he’s been forged as a medical skilled but once more wasn’t misplaced on the actor. “What’s it with me and medical doctors?” he muses. “Satirically, my daughter’s graduating from Duke in a month, and he or she needs to go to UCLA for her Grasp’s and PhD. She needs ‘physician’ on the finish of her title, so the large joke is I’ve performed one on TV, and my daughter can be one.”
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Although Dietz has appeared on a number of soaps, he admits he wasn’t as aware of the Salem crew. “In all probability loads of [the cast] was like, ‘Oh, who’s this new man that simply received this half?’ ” he notes. “I’m like, ‘Oh, no, no, man, I used to do that again within the day.’ I really feel so outdated now. I’m just a little bit grayer now.”
However the adrenaline rush from performing rapidly got here again to him after his first day on set. “I known as my spouse [Paige Rowland, ex-Kit Montgomery, All My Children] on the best way dwelling, and I used to be like, ‘Oh, my God! That was a lot enjoyable,’ ” he remembers. “I completely received bit once more. I imply, realistically, it had been perhaps 20 years since I did scenes like that in entrance of the digicam. I did a gig on Passions [as Jake in 2007] and Daring and the Lovely [as Dr. Mark Maclaine from 2002-05], however to return to that whenever you mainly don’t do it for 20 years is a very unusual expertise. It was superior, although. All people was simply very nice and made me really feel tremendous comfy.”
Dietz’s path to producing started 25 years in the past, when he began growing packages and pitching concepts to networks. “I ended up promoting a scripted present to NBC that received greenlit for pilot, and we thought it was going to go to sequence,” he remembers. “And I used to be like, ‘Oh, this is very easy.’”
When that didn’t pan out as deliberate, a good friend who was engaged on Massive Brother urged Dietz to contemplate pivoting to actuality TV. “Massive Brother was one in every of my favourite exhibits,” Michael Dietz shares. “I watched it religiously with my spouse and daughter, and he was the man that was arising with the video games and the challenges. I used to be like, ‘That’s the coolest job I’ve ever heard of in my life.’ And he ended up getting me an interview with Massive Brother. My resumé had nothing within the unscripted world, however I went in as a fan of the present with a ton of concepts. And the man on the time that was hiring was like, ‘Look, I’ve folks with tons of expertise on their resumés, however I like what you’ve are available with and your method.’ Every week and a half later, I received the decision that I used to be approaching as a producer for Massive Brother, and I’ve been working ever since.”
Dietz has discovered nice success behind the digicam and has served as co-executive producer on a string of high-profile exhibits, together with Home of Villains, Era Hole, and Love Island USA. He’s wanting so as to add much more credit to his spectacular listing of hits. “I’m nonetheless pitching and promoting loads of my very own exhibits,” he relays. “I’ve received seven exhibits in some stage of growth. Now we have one with Reese Witherspoon‘s firm [Hello Sunshine], a present that we simply began taking out pitching. I’ve one at Fox. I’ve one with Sony. After which my spouse, since we’ve been empty nesting for 4 years now, got here on and the 2 of us have put collectively exhibits, and we’re pitching. I can’t consider what number of pitches we had in the previous couple of months between Hulu, Netflix, NBC, all of the locations. In order that’s been actually superb for us.”
Although his plate is full on the manufacturing aspect, Dietz wouldn’t thoughts flexing his appearing muscular tissues occasionally. “I may see doing it if stuff like this got here up every so often,” he states. “Earlier than Days, I might have mentioned no. I felt like I had closed that chapter and moved on. However then I had that have, and I used to be like, ‘Oh, there’s no motive I’ve to shut this. That is incredible.’ So, I might undoubtedly have a dialog, and I’m 100% open now to discover potentialities that come up on this house once more.”
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