There’s a huge casting shakeup happening on Days of Our Lives!
This week, a new character will be introducing to the long-running Peacock soap series with a connection to a key role in the TV show.
The show is continuing to say goodbye to Bill Hayes, who portrayed Doug Williams in the series. Now, one young star is stepping into the series with a connection to the character!
If you didn’t know, Days is airing its 15,000th episode this week.
Keep reading to find out more…
Peyton Meyer is making his soap debut!
The 26-year-old Girl Meets World alum will be joining the cast of Days of Our Lives on Tuesday, December 3 as a new character, Doug Williams III, the grandson of the late Doug Williams.
“It’s a little bit of a crazy story,” he told TV Insider of the debut. “I lived for about 10 years in L.A. and then right around COVID time, I left L.A. and moved to Nashville and spent about two-and-a-half years there. I took some time off and then said, ‘I want to start acting again. I’m ready to get back in it.’ I booked a room in a house with some of my buddies. Four days after I had moved my stuff into that new house, I booked Days of our Lives, so it worked out perfectly; the timing was unbelievable.”
Doug Williams was introduced in 1970 as a con man, and it sounds like his grandson doesn’t fall far from the tree.
“When we first meet Doug, he’s a mischievous guy,” the actor teased.
“He’s in and out of trouble. No matter where he goes, chaos comes with him. He’s not purposefully mischievous or purposefully wishes harm on people. I think it’s just how he grew up, that everything he does ends up causing a bad karmic chaos storm behind him. He’s a gentle guy and he’s peaceful, but it seems that he doesn’t make the proper choices when he needs to.”
“When I got the script, I saw that it was episode 15,000, and I was like, ‘Oh, my, this is insane. Huge celebration for the cast and the crew. This is kind of cool that this is my first episode,’ ” Peyton said. “So I walked on set with the excitement, obviously, of a new show and meeting a whole bunch of new people.”
“When I got on set, it was really down,” he admitted of coming in while the cast mourned Bill Hayes.
“The energy was really low and I had no idea what was going on. We ended up filming the scenes and after, one of the crew members came up to me and she was like, ‘Just so you know, this is a very emotional day today and the fact that you were able to do that scene and carry a positive attitude into the set was so amazing to watch because I don’t know if you know what’s going on, but it’s very heavy today so thank you for coming in so professionally.’ I think it kind of worked better that I wasn’t fully aware of everything that was going on.”
The actor worked with Susan Seaforth Hayes (who plays Julie Williams), who was not only mourning her TV husband Doug, but her real-life one.
“Susan was the first scene that I had,” he recalled to the outlet.
“I’m very adamant about time. I always try to be 30 minutes, maybe an hour early. I don’t like being late. So I got there an hour and a half early, and the makeup department was about an hour and a half behind and we were one of the first scenes up. So when I got to hair and makeup, we had about seven minutes until my scene, so the crew and the cast were waiting on me to get to set, which was out of my control. They had been waiting about two or three minutes. I meet Susan and she looks at me and she is so intimidating because she’s so professional. She said, ‘Nice to meet you. Be on time, get your lines down, show up, and be prepared,’ and gave me the entire rundown of how the show works. Immediately, I’m like, ‘Wow, I’m so sorry I wasn’t late to makeup. I don’t have time to explain because we’re shooting the scene already.’ After that moment of intimidation from her, [I realized] she has such a power on set. I was sitting there as a 25-year-old memorizing 25 pages a night working, filming an episode per day, and I didn’t understand how the process worked and it was so difficult. Watching Susan do it so effortlessly was something that I’ll carry with me forever. She was so professional.”
Find out more details about how the show will handle the passing of the beloved star.
