Why ‘Days of our Lives’ Legend Deidre Hall First Said No to Playing Marlena

Few soap heroines are as iconic and universally known as Days of our Lives’ Marlena Evans. The Salem mainstay has been played by the same actress for half a century, enduring back-from-the-dead plots, demonic possession, the loss of children, and now widowhood. Through it all, Deidre Hall has been the face of Marlena, the woman everyone in Salem still comes to for advice. But when Hall was first offered the role back in 1976, she turned it down.

Deidre Hall Refused to Be Last Choice

To mark 50 years of playing Marlena, Hall reflected on her Days of our Lives life on NBC’s Today Show on the morning of June 19. Before giving Craig Melvin a classic soap opera slap, Hall told the host about her DAYS audition all those years ago.

Although she had played Nurse Barbara on a handful of The Young and the Restless episodes, per IMDb, Hall had never had a regular role on a soap opera. So, when she read for the role of Marlena, she didn’t think she was good enough. Hall was especially intimidated when she saw who she was up against when reading for the role.

“I had read the script and I wanted it so much. And when I screen tested, I tested with some very recognizable daytime faces and I thought ‘Oof, that’s where they’ll go,'” Hall explained to Melvin. “So, when they called, I thought, ‘Oh, everyone else must have turned it down.’ And cause I’m no dummy, I turned it down too, thinking there was something wrong with the part. They called me back a few weeks later and said, ‘Why didn’t you want to do it?’ I said, ‘I desperately want to do it.’ I thought I was like their last choice.”

When Hall realized she was the show’s first choice for the character, she said, “Tell them I’ll be there.” And the rest is television history.

Although Hall left the soap in the 1990s to star on the primetime drama Our House, she has made Marlena and Salem her home for decades and shows no signs of slowing down.