Soap Opera
The ‘Days of our Lives’ Favorite Who Had a Whole Other Life as a Sitcom and ‘90210’ Dad
Josh Taylor has played Roman Brady on Days of our Lives since 1997, but his career also includes ‘The Hogan Family ‘and ‘Beverly Hills 90210’ roles.
Josh Taylor has been a Days of our Lives mainstay since 1977, when he began playing Chris Kositchek, an inventor who eventually opened a Salem gym called The Body Connection before briefly becoming a lawyer. Within a year of passing the bar exam, Chris faded from the canvas with little explanation.
Ten years later, in 1997, Taylor returned to DAYS, but not as Chris. This time, Taylor was playing Roman Brady, a character originated by Wayne Northrop in 1981. Nearly two decades later, Taylor is still serving up beers, chowders, and ice cream sundaes, as Roman runs the famous Brady Pub.
Before Taylor ever became Roman and even while he was still playing Chris, Taylor took on another role — that of a sitcom dad on Valerie, which later became The Hogan Family.
In 1986, Taylor landed the plum role of Michael Hogan, the often-absent pilot husband of Valerie Harper‘s Valerie Hogan. Two years later, a contract dispute ended with Harper leaving the show and it being renamed, per IMDb. Taylor remained The Hogan Family until it left the airwaves in 1991, but his road back to DAYS was paved with more primetime work.
Episodic work on Walker, Texas Ranger, Diagnosis Murder, Matlock, and Murder, She Wrote followed. Taylor also played another famous primetime dad when he recurred as Jack McKay on Beverly Hills, 90210 from 1991 to 2000, father of Luke Perry‘s Dylan McKay, according to IMDb.
When DAYS came calling again to begin playing Roman, Taylor jumped at the chance and was sure he could fill some big shoes.
“Call it confident and cocky or whatever, but I felt calm,” he told Women’s World in 2025. “The big question at the time was how I felt about taking over for Drake Hogestyn and Wayne Northrop, rest in peace, who’d played Roman for all that time. Wayne had done a hell of a job making this character come alive, but I knew I could put my mark on it. I said, ‘In all due respect, I think my biggest competition is going to be Chris Kositchek!’ And that turned out to be true.”
