Kyle Brandt Looks Back at ‘Amazing’ Experience on ‘Days of Our Lives’ (Exclusive)

NFL fans know Kyle Brandt as one of the four outgoing personalities on the NFL Network show Good Morning Football, as well as his hit podcast 10 Questions with Kyle Brandt. But before Brandt was making NFL fans angry with his hot takes, the 42-year-old was making soap opera fans smile as he played the role of Philip Kiriakis on Days of Our Lives. PopCulture.com recently caught up with Brandt, who talked about how much he enjoyed being on the series, which began in 1965.

“Days of Our Lives was the time of my life,” Brandt said to PopCulture. “I have amazing things to say about it.” Brandt was 23 years old at the time when he got the part and said that he enjoyed being on the “corny sets” and saying the dialogue that went with it. “People ask me, ‘Do you guys think this is funny as we do?’” Brandt continued. “And I’m like, ‘Of course we do. We know it is.’”

Brandt got the role shortly after he appeared on the MTV series The Real World. “If you go to LA in 2002, every 20 seconds a new reality show castoff arrives,” Brandt stated when talking about his Days of Our Lives audition process. “I was doing that for a while, and there was such a stigma to the whole thing about reality this and reality that. And then this part became available on Days of Our Lives. I read it and I remember they said, ‘They want you to do it.’ I had a bunch of callbacks and everything.”

Brandt also talked about the screen test for the soap opera, which included him and six other actors. When Brandt talked to his agent about what he should do to make him stand out, “She’s like, ‘Find the tightest t-shirt you can find and were that,’” Brandt revealed. “I went to the Gap beforehand. I got the part, and I have to think it wasn’t because of the way I read the dialogue. It was probably the shirt.”

Shirt or acting skills, Brandt received a lot of love during his time on Days of Our Lives, which for him lasted from 2003 to 2006. “The fanbase is amazing,” Brandt said. “If you’re a fan of a movie star, maybe they do one or two movies a year. If you’re a fan of a big primetime actor, maybe they do 15 episodes a year. If you’re a fan of a soap actor, they come into your home 200 times a year at the same time on the same channel for the same length of time. They become like a family member. They are in your living room every single day at noon on NBC, so these people when they see you, oh my gosh, they love you. They get their money’s worth, they’re huggers, some of them are kissers.”