It’s been decades since Susan Seaforth Hayes as Julie Williams had a true storyline that was all her own on Days of Our Lives, but all of that is about to change with the introduction of a grandson she never knew she had.
This month marks the debut of Lamon Archey as Eli, the secret son Valerie has told nobody about–and whose father is David Banning, Julie’s only child.
It turns out Julie had no idea this grandson existed because Valerie didn’t even tell David he had a son.
In an interview with TV Insider’s Michael Logan, Hayes explains how history has a way of coming full circle, even in the fictional world of soaps. It turns out even when it seems life around us is going backwards, daytime can move forward.
“We’re digging into ancient history here. Of course, we’re connecting to that history in a curving line that leaves out 30 or 40 years of story,” Hayes said. “But, hey, I’ll take it! Back in the 1970s, DAYS tried an interracial love story with Julie’s son, David, falling in love with an African-American girl named Valerie, but NBC got nervous, pulled the plug and both characters went away for a while. We were…continue reading on the next page —>
“We’re digging into ancient history here. Of course, we’re connecting to that history in a curving line that leaves out 30 or 40 years of story,” Hayes said. “But, hey, I’ll take it! Back in the 1970s, DAYS tried an interracial love story with Julie’s son, David, falling in love with an African-American girl named Valerie, but NBC got nervous, pulled the plug and both characters went away for a while. We were attempting at that time to break some ground, but it’s taken this long to see a flower rising up through the ground we broke.”
The actress acknowledges all the years she spent on the back burner and how she took it all in stride.
“You have to detach,” she told TV Insider. “You have to say to yourself, ‘I am not Days of Our Lives. There is more to my life than this soap!’ I’ve seen actors go downhill mentally when they’re not working—especially actors who thought they were indispensable. I don’t want to be that person. So I consider every script to be a gift. A sweet little prize. An unexpected bauble coming through the ether.”
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