Soap Hub Performer Of The Week For DAYS: Susan Seaforth Hayes

 

Though you can always count on her for a laugh, DAYS’ Susan Seaforth Hayes is an old pro at tugging on her audience’s heartstrings and eliciting a tear or three – feats worthy of recognition in the form of Soap Hub’s Performer of the Week award.

Susan Seaforth Hayes – Performer of the Week

Seaforth Hayes has always played Julie Williams as a straight shooter; the type who calls things as she sees them. As Julie sees it, her granddaughter-in-law should have kept schtum in regard to TR Coates’s (William Christian) true cause of death.

“Every single person at that wedding was ready to take a vow of silence about her confession,” she reminded Eli Grant (Lamon Archey). “She didn’t have to go to the police and turn herself in.” And while such an opinion could have been delivered as a harsh rebuke, Seaforth Hayes imbued her lines with utmost concern and familial love.

After Eli took his leave and left Julie to her grandmotherly duties, Seaforth Hayes presented as frazzled and putout – but that all changed when Julie’s better half, Doug Williams (Bill Hayes) came a calling.

In a split second Seaforth Hayes transformed from bemused to beaming. Playing opposite her real-life husband always seems to put that extra pep in her step. As a treat for viewers, the Hayes’ broke out into song…in the fiction, it was to soothe a fussy Jules Carver.

But as beautiful as those scenes were, Seaforth Hayes’ shining moment came when Julie learned that she’d have to say goodbye not only to a prison-bound Lani Price Grant (Sal Stowers), but to Eli and their twins as well.

“All I wanna do is lock ya in a box and keep ya in Salem forever. [But] i’m not going to do it,” Julie explained, her cheeks drenched in tears, her voice cracking with each word. “Your leaving is right. It’s what’s right for your family.”

And though Julie knew that, “It’s going to hurt like Hell to let you go,” she managed to do it, but not before Seaforth Hayes and Archey took a twirl about the set, and not before Julie got a big bear hug from Lani who promised, “[When] I start to wear down, I’ll just ask myself, ‘What would Julie do?'”