DAYS' Susan Seaforth Hayes on Horton House Fire: "The Aftermath Has Quite a Few Surprises"
Susan Seaforth Hayes
Chris Haston for NBC
When the Horton house went up in flames on Days of Our Lives, fans (and Salemites) were shocked. But fear not! There's lots of good storyline coming out of this plot, Susan Seaforth Hayes (Julie) told Soap Opera Digest. She also delved into her reactions to the big news.
What did she think when she first heard that the house was going to be burned down? Seaforth Hayes explained:
Oh, a great deal of depression, really. ‘How could we do that? What will happen to the Horton family, what’s left of it? Where will Doug and Julie go?’ It’s an anchor to the show. Then it was immediately made clear not to get too upset about it; it was immediately made clear for those of us who were deeply upset. That is simply because at one point some years ago, the Horton family home was set to be scrapped and burned and no longer visible on the show. The previous writers toyed with the idea of eliminating it. They were ready to ashcan the set and the whole concept. But it was saved. Cooler heads prevailed.
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What can fans expect to happen once the ashes from the fire cool? The soap legend shared:
The aftermath is long and interesting. There’s plot in there. The aftermath has quite a few surprises, and the return of a clean home. The return of a home is played out. I have a lot to do in those shows coming up following the fire. One of them is a nice plunge back into the history of the house; the history of Tom [Macdonald Carey] and Alice [Frances Reid] in the house, [Julie] and the kids, which I get to dwell on.
Seaforth Hayes continued:
When we got to the point of Julie talking about her grandmother, there was so much to say. It was so emotional for me, because of Francis [Reid, ex-Alice], and because I was raised by my grandmother and mother. So just [anticipating] the words, I started to choke up, and I’d worked very hard on the speeches. It meant so much to me. I went blank, which is unusual. I got up and had to walk around a little bit, try to calm down and say, ‘Now you can do this. You’ve done this before. This is the show. You do this.’ But it was hard, like the last scene I did with Billy [Hayes, ex-Doug, her real-life husband, who passed away in January]. But we’ll talk about that another time.
