“Days” exec on exit of Chandler Massey: “No ugliness, no weirdness. It was all done within the family”

I don’t know about you, but I’m really going to miss Chandler Massey on Days of Our Lives.

The Two-time Emmy winner will still be appearing on the show though the end of December and I’ll be savoring what remains of his time as Will Horton.

Chandler’s replacement, Guy Wilson, has already begun working on the show and will debut in January. The change came three months sooner than expected leading to speculation of some behind-the-scenes unpleasantness.

The Backlot spoke with Days Co-Executive Producer Greg Meng about it. Here’s part of what he said:

“There was a lot of accuracy and inaccuracy in the press. Chandler is not on the show right now. We have an incredible actor on board that is able to take the reins from this role that Chandler did an amazing job creating. And we found somebody who’s extremely talented… but more than talented, he’s so sensitive to this role and so sensitive to the story and the relationship and all that stuff. So we feel that we were very, very lucky to find somebody who wanted to take the reins. It’s an extremely difficult thing to do because Chandler had created such a wonderful role here, played it so sensitively and everything. So we think we found him, and we are very lucky to have somebody that will take those reins that Chandler handed to him and go forward with that.”

“No ugliness, no weirdness. It was all done within the family, with Chandler and everything based on his future plans and based on where we needed to go with the story. I even told Chandler, I said laughingly, ‘This is your fault because you’ve created such an amazing character here and the storyline is so amazing and we’ve got major places to go with that and we can’t lose momentum.’ He was always fine with that, but he’s got plans. So it all worked out very well. It’s just gotten some misinterpretation out there.”