Meet ‘Days of Our Lives’ Newbie Ximena Duque: The Telenovela Star Who’s Going to Shake Up Salem
So you thought the returned-from-dead Aiden Jennings was going to be the big summer 2016 drama for Days of Our Lives supercouple-in-the-making Hope and Rafe? Well, you’re right. But thanks to Rafe’s mama, Adriana, there’s some female drama ahead for the couple, too, and she’s about to arrive in Salem in the form of Colombian telenovela star Ximena Duque.
In the clip above, Duque makes her June 7 DOOL debut with an arrival at Rafe’s (Galen Gering) front door, introducing herself as Blanca, a friend of Adriana.
“He was like, ‘Who is this? Hmmm,’” Duque tells Yahoo TV, describing Blanca as a character who’s going to be happy and fresh, and who will “bring the Latin flavor to the show.”
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Whether or not that means a full-blown romance with Mr. Hernandez, Duque isn’t saying. But she suggests her stay in town — after being summoned from Mexico by Adriana, who isn’t thrilled about Rafe’s complicated pairing with Hope — might have a few twists. “You never know where the character is going to go,” says Duque, who’s making her English-speaking television debut with the role of Blanca. “I can’t give you that much information, because I want you to see the show, but yes, at the beginning, [Blanca] was flirting with Rafe, and then [she] ended up going another route, which was great.”
Duque, a telenovela favorite who’s earned numerous accolades in Telemundo’s Premios Tu Mundo entertainment awards — including The Perfect Couple and The Best Kiss for Corazón Valiente, and The Best Bad Girl for Santa Diabla — says she was surprised to land the role of Blanca after auditioning with a video she shot herself on her cellphone. “It was really fast,” she says of the process, which allowed her just 10 days between landing the job and flying from her home in Miami to Los Angeles to start on Days. “The good thing is, I’ve done many soap operas. You need to have a certain rhythm to do these kind of shows, and I have it. Here in Miami when we shoot a soap opera, we do 20 scenes daily. [At] Days, they don’t do that many scenes, so even though I had to speak in English, and even though I had to memorize everything in English and that was hard, for me it was also kind of easy because we do a lot more scenes [for telenovelas].”
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For her next English-speaking role, Duque says a dream gig would be a spot in a big-screen blockbuster — memo to Megan Fox: call Duque if you ever tire of playing April O’Neil in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies — and she would definitely be into returning to DOOL after her initial short run on the NBC soap.
“You know what? I’m very excited about that, because I had such a great time. I think as my first [English-speaking] job, it was great. It was more like a school. You learn so much from your co-workers, from everybody,” Duque says. “If they ask me to go back, I’ll be more than happy to go.”
Days of Our Lives airs weekdays on NBC; check local listings for time
