*That’s* What’s Up, Doc: On Her 48th Marlena-versary, Deidre Hall Recalls the Moment She Discovered That She Was a Beloved MVP

On June 21, 1976, a new character knocked on the hearts of the soap’s viewers. As radiantly as she smiled, they couldn’t help but respond, “Come on in.”

All those years ago, Deidre Hall would’ve been the last person on earth to think that she was the right person to play Days of Our Lives’ Marlena Evans, much less that she’d still inhabit the role decades later. In fact, when the NBC soap offered her the part, she took a pass. “I thought there had been a mistake,” she said in Days of Our Lives: The Complete Family Album. “So I turned it down. A few months later, it was offered to me again.

“Now,” she continued, “I was certain something really must be wrong if they couldn’t find anyone to accept the role. Then they made it clear there was no one else who they wanted and were very surprised by what I had thought. So I came on board.”

More: Soaps’ longest-serving actors [PHOTOS]

And aside from a break here and there, most notably when she left to focus on primetime’s Our House with Wilford Brimley in the late 1980s, Hall’s never gotten off board. At this point, it’s impossible to think of Days of Our Lives without two things: the hourglass and this particular leading lady. Ironically, she wasn’t always aware of just how beloved she is. “I guess there were popularity polls out… and they would count fan mail, trying to get a gauge of what the audience was enjoying,” she told Soaps.com in 2024. “And then they would write to that.

“Al Rabin was one of our executive producers early on, and I think it might’ve been when Drake Hogestyn came in. I could be wrong. But we were on the stage — maybe he was screen-testing — and Al came out and said, ‘I should tell you, this actress has taken every leading man of hers right to the top of the polls, so you’re in very good hands. Now you may do the same.’

“So I thought, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you thought that,’” she added. “That was great feedback.” (Watch the interview below.)

Nevertheless, Hall was and still is as focused on being a team player as an MVP. “I know I’m important to the show,” she said. But “we’re an ensemble, and important to the show goes to who’s carrying the storyline, because everybody’s important and everybody interacts. We’re just there doing a job, and everybody’s going so fast and working so hard that the goal is to keep us on the air.

“It doesn’t matter who’s got the lead storyline and any of that stuff,” she goes on. “Just keep the whole ensemble together because we support an enormous number of people, and that’s a livelihood.” It’s also a never-ending challenge of the best sort. The show is forever finding new ways to keep the vet on her toes. Just consider the range of storylines that she’s played over the years.

Actually, let us help you consider that range. All you have to do is click here or on the photo gallery below, and you’ll be ushered into a photo album of Marlena’s most memorable moments, from her “Roman holiday” to the period when had, erm, “a devil of a time.”