Hall has played the iconic “Days” character Marlena Evans since 1976 — and her trash-talking, gum-spitting look-alike, Hattie Adams, for nearly as long.
Deidre Hall has loved playing Days of Our Lives’ resident queen Marlena Evans enough to stay on with the series for going on 50 years. But when pressed, she has to admit there’s another resident of Salem she likes playing even more.
“I’ve played for Marlena for so many years and she is, you know, just rigid, and by the numbers. Predictable in a pleasant way,” Hall said on the most recent episode of the Soapy podcast. “But getting to play Hattie is just, oh golly, you know, spitting gum on people, spilling things on people.”
Hall is an identical twin, and her sister, Andrea, was once cast to play Marlena’s own twin, Samantha. But that character fell victim to the Salem Strangler in 1982. Still, on a soap as wacky as Days and with a character as beloved as Marlena, there was an enduring desire for double trouble. Years later, Hall explained that Days producers cooked up the idea for “somebody who, in the right light, in the right moment, looked something like Marlena. So, ‘Who do we get?'” Hall told hosts Rebecca Budig and Greg Rikaart, whose Days character Leo Stark has undergone therapy courtesy of Dr. Evans.
Hall jokingly imagined the “deep-thinking producers” deliberating. “‘Oh wait, we do have somebody who looks something like her in the right light.'”
It was then that Hattie Adams was born.
Once more, Andrea Hall originated the role of Marlena’s free-wheeling, trash-talking, devil-may-care look-alike Hattie. But after just two years, Andrea sought a full return to her life outside the spotlight, and her work as a special education teacher. Deidre took over the role from her sister in 2004, and has savored the opportunity to play Hattie ever since.
Hall’s reference to “spitting gum” prompted both Budig and Rikaart to press the actress for the story behind one of Hattie’s most infamous bad girl moments: spitting gum directly in the face Peter Reckell’s Bo Brady.
“No one broke! Did you try it in rehearsal?” Budig marveled.
“No,” Hall flatly replied. “I said to [Reckell], ‘You know, it’s Hattie; we never know what she’s going to do.’ [He said,] ‘Don’t be cute.’ I said, ‘We just, we can’t predict her.’ [He said,] ‘Don’t do anything.’ So we rolled tape and I thought, ‘Yeah, all right.’ As we know, I spit my gum on him, and it landed on him. Then that was a hard moment,” she said, referring back to Budig’s shock that no one broke character.
Hall recently revisited the moment from the 2004 episode on her Facebook, sharing a clip of the scene with the caption, “Funny Friday!! Reckell and I STILL howl over the gum moment. Heroic that nobody broke!!”
In the scene, Hall’s leather clad, choker-wearing, swaggering Hattie reintroduces herself after a few years away.
“Who the hell is this!” Reckell’s Bo demands.
Hattie responds in kind: “I got a tongue in my head! Ask me… I’m Hattie Adams. Who the hell are you?” When another character points out she “looks so much like Marlena,” Hattie quips, “Don’t insult me! I’m younger, I’m thinner, my blonde didn’t come out of a bottle.”
Bo then attempts to arrest Hattie, prompting her to bark, “No frickin’ way!” and spit her gum onto his forehead.
Though Hall is practically synonymous with Days at this point in her career, she’s played a variety of other roles on series like Murder, She Wrote, Columbo, and most recently, Hacks, on which she starred as herself.
“The offer was just: Would you come and play the legendary Deidre Hall? I thought, ‘Oh, that’s hilarious,'” she told Entertainment Weekly in 2024. Hall’s slightly fictionalized version of herself — she plays Paul W. Downs’ character’s mother — allowed her to break out of her Days mold in one important way: “I love comedy. I adore comedy. I get very few chances to do any,” she revealed.
But as long as Hattie keeps raising hell around Salem, Hall will get plenty more chances to flex her comedy muscles.
