“Days of Our Lives”' Susan Seaforth Hayes Opens Up About Life After Losing Husband Bill Hayes
“I haven’t had the stress of doing anything alone, really, and now I will have to,” Susan Seaforth Hayes said after the death of her husband Bill Hayes in January
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Bill Hayes (left) and Susan Seaforth Hayes (right)Susan Seaforth Hayes is remembering her late husband Bill Hayes six months after his death.
The actress, 81, opened up in an interview with TV Insider about her life following the death of Bill at age 98 in January. The couple, who met filming a love scene in Days of Our Lives in 1970, were married for 50 years and played husband and wife Doug and Julie Williams on the famous soap throughout that entire time.
On July 11, Bill's final appearance on Days of Our Lives aired on television, showing the real-life couple sharing an emotional moment together in the posthumous episode.
“I’m magnificently supported by all the people that love Bill that I knew, and then all the people that I didn’t even know who love Bill,” Susan told the outlet. “People come up to me in the street, I get actual mail from people, I see lots of comments on the Instagram page and the various platforms. I thought I was the one that understood him and loved him so much, but I wasn’t the only one, and that’s been very gratifying.”
Aside from the fans, Susan confessed she has been “very lonely” without her husband. She currently lives with her daughter Anne Schoettle and Days of Our Lives director David Shaughnessy, but she said she spends a lot of time by herself.
“We still say adios around five o’clock in the afternoon, so I fill the next 12 hours or more with other things than companionship,” she explained. “There are so many treasures from Bill’s career that I’m still searching in my heart for where I should put them [so] that they’ll have the most impact and mean the most to people.”
She added that she also needs “to finish the novel that Billy and I were working on for nearly 10 years.”
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Continuing to film has also kept her busy, she said. (The pair shot Bill's final scene together just four weeks before his death.) Although his character’s death will not air until the fall, Susan said production never stopped, which gave her reason to carry on.
“The show has kept me alive, and Ken [Corday, executive producer] has been exceedingly sweet,” she said. “And Ron Carlivati, our head writer, has asked me, ‘What do you think Julie is feeling?’ And I answered and he has created scenes that work that way, which has been very gratifying, very lovely.”
Ron Tom/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty
Bill Hayes (left) and Susan Seaforth Hayes (right)The gap Bill's death left in Susan's life has been very evident, she shared with the outlet. She said she realized how she “had been loved” her entire life and never learned to live without that support.
“My mother and grandmother, my parents who raised me, loved me,” she said. “And before my mother was gone, Bill came into my life and she adored him, too. So I had all of that time — 80 years of being loved significantly. The support of knowing that somebody cares was terrific.”
She continued: “I see the lives of so many people that have never had that, not even for a minute anywhere, and it makes a difference. It empowers you to think you deserve to be here.”
Now, adapting to being there for herself has been a change.
“I haven’t had the stress of doing anything alone, really, and now I will have to,” she said.
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