Deidre Hall’s iconic role as Dr. Marlena Evans almost didn’t happen.
The soap veteran appeared on the July 15 episode of Soapy, hosted by The Bold and the Beautiful star Rebecca Budig and her fellow Days of Our Lives star Greg Rikaart. Budig, 52, noted that before she joined Days, Hall, 77, appeared on The Young and the Restless as Barbara Anderson beginning in 1973.
“I was brought in to be Brad Elliott, who was their leading man, [his] backstory,” she said, noting there was “no there there” for the character. “But it gave me a taste of wanting to be part of an ensemble. And I said to my agent, get me a soap.”
Rikaart, 48, could relate to that experience. “My personal experience is once you drink the Kool-Aid of getting to do work every day and just the character evolvement that happens when we’re getting script after script, I just love it,” he said. “And I think once I started, I was like, ‘Oh, I will stay at this job or in this genre for as long as they’ll have me.’ ”
In 1976, Hall was offered the role of Marlena, but she ended up turning it down. “I was screen testing, and they usually try and have people not in the same room,” she said. “… And I happened to see a couple women and I thought, ‘My word, look who’s testing for this.’ ” Hall felt there was no way Days of Our Lives would cast her over those big-name actresses.
“And I tested, and I got a call saying that I had gotten it. And so I knew, as actors in their craziness know, if they chose me, everybody else must have turned it down,” she said. “There must be something wrong with this part, so I’m turning it down too. And I did.”
Her agent called her three weeks later to ask what happened. “Tell me what’s going on here. You said you wanted to do a soap,” she remembered him saying. “I said, ‘But there’s something wrong with it.’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘I wasn’t their first choice.’ ”
Her agent told her, “Yes, you were.” Hall called it a “You like me, you really like me” moment, and, her doubts gone, she remembered “I love that part.” The rest is history, and Hall’s role as Marlena has made her one of the longest-tenured actors in all of soaps.
Clockwise from left: Deidre Hall as Dr. Marlena Evans, Kyle Lowder as Brady Black, Kirsten Storms as Belle Black and Drake Hogestyn as John Black on ‘Days of Our Lives’.
As for those actresses who intimidated Hall that day, she doesn’t remember who they were anymore. “They were recognizable to me 40 years ago,” she said.
In her almost 50 years in the role, Marlena’s trials and tribulations have included falling out of a window, hysterical amnesia, kidnapping, being targeted by serial killers, being replaced by an unhinged lookalike, and, most famously, two demonic possessions.
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Back in 2024, Hall told PEOPLE that the one plotline she still wants to do is Marlena dealing with a sickness. “Marlena has never had a serious illness — I mean, unless you’re counting possession,” she said.
She noted her gratitude at getting to continually come back to Days. “I think 2% of the Screen Actors Guild makes a living being on camera. So to have that be a part of my every day and every week for years and years and years is just such a joy and such a pleasure, and I’m beyond grateful for it,” she said.
