Jamie Martin Mann is leaving his role of Tate Black on Days of our Lives. His last air date is set for later this week. Now, the actor is speaking out on his departure from the Peacock series.
Goodbye, Salem
While Mann isn’t happy to be leaving DAYS, he is glad that he got to play out Tate being exonerated in Holly’s overdoes. “I felt a lot of gratitude that I had the chance to close the storyline,” Mann told Soap Opera Digest. “It was extremely fulfilling both for the character and also just for me, acting-wise, to be able to see the other side [of Tate’s predicament], to be able to actually step out, go back and re-encounter that sense of normalcy.”
Mann isn’t leaving daytime drama in order to go to the big screen. He’s going to focus on his college studies at the University of Michigan (whose mascot is The Wolverine). He came to the realization that traveling back and forth between the West Coast and the Midwest was going to be too taxing.
“[T]o miss class when you’re in an acting program can be extremely detrimental,” he cautions. “I knew that and understood that trying to juggle [both] at the same time would have been a detriment to the work that I was doing in school.”
He feels DAYS, too, would have suffered. “I also think it would not have been fair to the show and to my fellow castmates to be not dedicating the time required to [the job],” Mann says. “You’re only as good as your partner. If you’re working with a scene partner who’s not prepared and who’s not fully committed, it’s not fair. I didn’t want to put any of those fellow actors that I respected so much through that position.”
Mann’s walking away from DAYS but he’s going to hold in his heart three special friendships — on-screen love interest Ashley Puzemis (Holly), and TV parents Emily O’Brien (Theresa), and Eric Martsolf (Brady). He says he’s also going to miss Carson Boatman (Johnny) and Dan Feuerriegel (EJ), and Arianne Zucker (Nicole).
Could he ever return to the show again — possibly in another role now that Leo Howard is taking over as Tate? “I’m graduating in 2025, so I hope that at some point in time, I get to work with everyone at DAYS again,” Mann says.
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