It’s a role that’s been over a decade in the making, but 11 years after wrapping his run as Paul’s disturbed son Ricky over on The Young and the Restless, Peter Porte is back in daytime playing another villainous role as Days of Our Lives‘ Dimitri Von Leuschner. And with the latest twist in his story, it sounds like he’s here to stay!
“It’s been amazing being back,” Porte tells Soap Opera Digest in their most recent issue of returning to daytime. “I always wanted to come back because I think this is the closest to live theater that we have on this coast, and that’s where I got my start.”
Back he is and as of Days of Our Lives‘ Tuesday, May 16 episode, his character isn’t just tied to one powerful Salem family, but two! We thought it was a pretty good chance that Dimitri would end up being a long-lost DiMera, but what we didn’t expect was that he wasn’t one of Stefano’s offspring!
It turns out Dimitri isn’t Stefano’s son, but Megan’s. Presumably, his father was a Von Leuschner, and the timing actually works out fairly well if Megan secretly had Dimitri before moving to Salem in 1984. Back when she first appeared, she told Bo that she had been pregnant with his child and gave him up for adoption (before it came out that she lied and had had an abortion), but what if the adoption thing had been true — only it hadn’t been Bo’s child?
We’re sure we’ll get more details soon enough, but with the news that Dimitri is her child and that he’s soon to spring Mommie Dearest from prison and win immunity for himself, it sounds like Porte and the new DiMera will be sticking around in Salem for some time now.
As the actor tells Digest, he was “shocked and excited” when Days of Our Lives offered to have him stick around. “I thought they were throwing me in for another episode and then they offered the contract, and I was shocked.”
The great thing about Dimitri is that, as Porte explains, he’s pretty much a blank slate. He had a brief start on the first Beyond Salem and he’s tied, apparently to both Carly and Frankie on the Von Leuschner side and now the DiMeras on his mom’s side, but that was about it. Now that he’s sticking around, he’s got a chance to develop the character pretty much from scrap.
“That’s the fun thing about being on every day,” he explains to Digest. “You really have time to develop a character before the audience’s eyes. I don’t know where the story is going, so it’s a surprise to us every week.”
Take a look at our photo gallery of DiMera family tree to see everyone Dimitri is now related to.
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