Fixed my own problem yesterday. Figure I'd post this info in case someone else faces this.
I replaced rear passenger side door actuator a few days ago. My first mistake was not having clipped the exterior door handle rod far enough in the plastic clip. My second mistake was not to check if I had mistakenly activated the interior child safety lock. When I tried to open the door from outside, the rod being too short to properly activate door latch, would not open from outside. The fact I had mistakenly activated child lock safety, prevented me to open the door from Inside.
I managed to pull apart the upper portion of the door liner, and remove the window rubber liner. But that didn't provide enough space for me to stick my arm inside the door. So, I then moved on to unbolt the door hindges, and, with someone else holding the door open as far as they can from the hindges side of the door, this allowed me to finish pulling apart the liner that sits behind the car frame.
Once all this done, I was able to stick my arm all the way inside, and push open the latch manually.