Exclusive: Rachel Boyd Instantly Bonded with DAYS Mom Shi Ne Nielson

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Mommy Dearest: Rachel Boyd (Sophia, l.) with her DAYS mother, Shi Ne Nielson (Amy).

Forming a bond with her Days of our Lives mother, actress Shi Ne Nielson (Amy), happened rather effortlessly for Rachel Boyd (Sophia). Recalls Boyd, “The first day we were shooting together, we had a 10-minute break in between a couple scenes. People will usually leave the set and come back, but Shi Ne was sitting there and said, ‘Stay.’ So we sat across from each other in the Horton Town Square, after everyone left. She started asking me questions about my life and about moving to California and giving me advice on things.”

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Nielson’s kind demeanor made Boyd immediately feel welcomed by her TV mom. “Shi Ne was really friendly to me and so warm,” notes Boyd. “She would invite me to run lines together, which was nice of her.” And while the actress’s real-life openness is a far cry from Amy’s somewhat icy demeanor, Boyd notes, “I think it takes a really kind person to play those characters that are tough and mean and cutthroat. And Shi Ne is so great at putting up that tough exterior and playing a very intimidating mother.” Not only that, but Nielson’s performance has helped her better understand her own character. “I quickly got a sense of Sophia’s upbringing and her [life] circumstances from acting with Shi Ne,” she asserts.

Boyd says that Amy and Sophia’s mother/daughter dynamic bears little resemblance to the one she shares with her own mom off-camera. “My relationship with my mother is very different than Sophia’s is,” Boyd nods. “So I wasn’t able to really pull from personal experiences in terms of that. But I think Sophia’s relationship with her mother is universal in the sense that they both really love each other and really want what’s best for one another. Sometimes that can get clouded, because Sophia’s mom thinks that one thing is right and one thing is moral and that’s what Sophia has to do, but Sophia thinks about it a different way.”

Despite Amy and Sophia’s opposing viewpoints on Sophia’s pregnancy, Boyd really feels the love and genuine connection between the fictional mother and daughter. “What’s really nice about what I got to experience in my scenes with Shi Ne and building that relationship between Sophia and her mother is that it’s a little bit more complex,” sums up Boyd. “They both do love each other and are both coming from a very genuine place. Amy is protecting what her beliefs are, and Sophia is protecting her life and her future and her goals and her own beliefs and morals. So I think it’s cool. The way that I’ve been able to experience it is that no one side is completely evil in that they are both coming from genuine places.”