Days of Our Lives actress Deidre Hall can’t forget, more than 40 years later, how upset fans were in 1982, when they thought her character Marlena had been killed off. And they made their displeasure known.
But it wasn’t Marlena who had died. It was her twin sister Samantha, portrayed by Deidre’s real-life twin sister Andrea Hall, who died at the hands of the notorious serial killer in town, the Salem Strangler (Jack Coleman). The audience just hadn’t learned that yet.
“I was at work that day, and [executive producer] Al Rabin knocked on the door, and he said, ‘There is apparently a picket line around the studio about you being killed off,'” Deidre recently told TV Insider. “I said, ‘Wow, what?’ It aired in New York, and word traveled fast, and people were not having it.”
Days fans went right to the source.
“So, they circled the studio, and if I went outside, they’d know I was working that day and that Marlena’s not dead. Al decided it was worth the risk of sharing that knowledge, so I went out and met with fans,” Deidre explained. “It was a simpler time, secrets were secrets, and storylines stayed mysterious and weren’t being leaked, so you could surprise an audience.”
They probably would have felt much better, too, with the knowledge that, in 2025, Deidre continues to be a cast member.
The actress, whose career has also included series such as Emergency! and Our House, reminisced, too, on how Andrea came to work with her in the first place. Her twin is not an actor by trade.
“Anne Marcus, our beloved head writer at the time, took meetings with a few of the lead actors, and one of her questions was, ‘What is a storyline you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t?'” Deidre noted. “So, I said, ‘Gosh, I think it’d be fun to do a story with my twin sister.’ And she put her pen down and said, ‘What? You have a twin sister? Is she identical?’ And then the game changed. She said, ‘Can we get her?’ I said, ‘She’s a special education teacher in Virginia. I don’t know. Let me ask.'”
Of course, they did get her. Deidre’s favorite storylines on the soap have been those involving her and her sister, she told PEOPLE in May 2023. They worked together from 1977 to 1982 and again in 2000 to 2001, when Andrea played a different character.
Days of Our Lives airs weekdays on Peacock.
