Breaking News: Days of Our Lives Star Paul Telfer and Wife Announce Rare and Exciting Update 🎉❤️

It’s no secret to anyone with eyes that Paul Telfer is a man who believes in keeping in shape. In fact, you might even say that it’s part of the Days of Our Lives fave’s brand—that’s how he put it in a Soaps.com interview.

He’s always, he noted, been body-conscious, and because of that, it becomes a part of your thing. Here’s an actor who’s very tall, here’s an actor who’s short, here’s an actor who has a six-pack—so much of this job is about the way you look. And hey, that look got him success on miniseries like Hercules and Spartacus, and it’s been serving him well on Days of Our Lives.

But it was also wearing him down. He’d been working out seriously since he was 14 and had racked up injuries here and there that he just did his best to ignore and push through. So he’d been in good shape for television—and then the pandemic struck.

Days of Our Lives shut down production, and the world just stopped for months and months.

At first, he was good about working out, but then he thought, You know what? I think I’m going to take a break. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a real break from exercise.

He still kept active, but he gave his body a rest from the hardcore stuff, thinking, I’m not going to keep it up just in case Days of Our Lives comes back in a couple of weeks. This is a major historic event—just enjoy your life for a bit.

So he did.

Then the show came back, and he was, as he put it, “in the worst shape I’ve ever been in as a grown-up.”

And it wasn’t that bad.

He realized, Oh, I kind of got away with it. Years before, he had been self-conscious about going to the beach not being in peak physical shape, let alone appearing on television.

But then, there he was on TV, and the world didn’t end.

He wasn’t criticized. In fact, fans were still telling him how amazing he looked. That helped teach him to ease up a bit—to not be so worried about being in perfect shape nonstop and even to be less self-critical.

“What’s interesting,” Telfer shared, “is our own self-conscious sense and the standards to which we hold ourselves can be very different from what other people think.”

He realized that the way he felt he had to look wasn’t necessarily the way everyone else expected him to look.

With that said, fans have come to expect a certain look from Telfer and his character, Xander. But it’s not necessarily one of flawless physical perfection—not that the man ever looks remotely bad!

So when he first shared an important video message from Days of Our Lives on his Instagram, he cheekily realized in no time that he was, as he put it, #unrecognizable.

“Cheers, everyone,” he greets the camera. “It’s me, Paul Telfer from Days of Our Lives.”

Crickets.

“You know, I play Xander. Xander Cook. Xander Kiriakis… Wait a minute! I’ve got it!”

Telfer then proceeds to remove his shirt, and—voilà!

“Now you recognize me!”

“I just wanted to let you know that Days of Our Lives is now streaming on Peacock. See you there!”

So while Telfer has learned to be less self-critical, he’s also not afraid to lean into the hilarity of Xander’s seeming allergy to clothes.

We’ll take it—as the shirtless man said, Days of Our Lives is now airing exclusively on Peacock.