‘Days of Our Lives’: Susan Seaforth Hayes to Pay Tribute to Late Husband Bill Hayes on Air

Dan Clarendon November 3, 2024, 10:48 am

Bill Hayes and Susan Seaforth Hayes of Days of Our Lives - Season 2018 — Paul Drinkwater/NBC

For over half a century, husband-wife team Bill Hayes and Susan Seaforth Hayes shared the screen on Days of Our Lives. Hayes died at age 98 this January, but Seaforth Hayes will get a chance to pay tribute to the love of her life in an upcoming episode of the Peacock soap.

Days will depict the death of Hayes’ Doug Williams in a storyline starting sometime next week, Variety reports. And Seaforth Hayes’ Julie Williams will eulogize Doug with many of the same sentiments from the actor’s real-life eulogy for her husband.

“Being without Bill is quite a change,” Seaforth Hayes tells the publication. “I really appreciate what the producers have done to honor him — to allow me to give pretty much the same eulogy [on the show for Doug] that I gave [Bill] at our church. I certainly didn’t expect that. He deserved to be lifted up, and I was so, so pleased that [his death] wasn’t just passed over as something that happened off stage. It happens very much on stage, too. It was difficult to do, but not as difficult as living through it in life.”

NBC/Courtesy: Everett Collection

Seaforth Hayes joined Days of Our Lives in 1968, and Hayes arrived in 1970. The actors married in 1974, and Julie and Doug followed suit in 1976. And Days fans can expect to see some of the supercouple’s biggest moments on screen again. “They’re apparently putting together a lot of historical tapes around [Doug and Julie’s early days together],” Seaforth Hayes tells Variety.

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The six-time Daytime Emmy nominee previously explained to TV Insider that her husband shot his final Days scenes four weeks before his death. “And the last few shows that he did, he was completely blind,” she said. “So there! In show business, you rise to the occasion, or you never get to have another occasion. And he always did.”

Seaforth Hayes also discussed the meaningfulness of the last scene she and Hayes filmed together, one in which Julie and Doug tell each other how much they care for one another. “And I was allowed to add some lines to the scene, between ourselves,” she said. “The last line I wrote for Billy was, ‘Give me another kiss.’ So that’s for the audience, and that’s from him.”

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