‘Days of Our Lives’ Star Melissa Reeves on Her First Role: ‘I Was Clueless’ (Exclusive)
Melissa Reeves is celebrating 40 years since she joined the cast of Days of our Lives as Jennifer Horton Deveraux. But before she became a mainstay in Salem, she appeared on another NBC soap, Santa Barbara.
At the time, the East Coast-based Reeves had her sights set on working in the theater. “They cast me out of New York when I was taking my little dance classes, looking at the Winter Garden Theater, just wanting to be in Cats,” she recalls. “And all of a sudden, I’m flying to L.A. to be on Santa Barbara and it was amazing. I was only 17, so I had to get emancipated. I had never been out of New Jersey, anywhere except for New York, where I lived a lot of my life as a young teenager. It was crazy,”
Reeves admits she didn’t know anything about the ins and outs of show business and her move to Tinseltown was a heady experience. “It was 1984 and I was clueless that a show was launching or what it even what it was about,” she says. “I just knew I had to show up and say these lines and act like I did in the audition.”
Getting the hang of the L.A. lingo proved challenging. “I’ll never forget, I saw this word on the script, ‘gnarly,’ and I’m from New Jersey,” she notes. “I knew nothing about California and I said ‘guh-narly’. And they just started laughing. They were like, ‘Oh, it’s a California word. You’re really gonna have to work on your New Jersey accent.’ And I was like, ‘New Jersey accent? What are you even talking about?’”
The original cast of Santa Barbara included Robin Wright (Kelly Capwell) and A Martinez (Cruz Castillo) making their daytime debuts, as well as familiar soap faces like Marcy Walker (Eden Capwell; ex-Liza Colby, All My Children) and Jed Allan (C.C. Capwell; ex-Don Craig, Days of our Lives). One cast member would later cross paths with Reeves on Days. “I used to dogsit Louise Sorel‘s (Augusta Lockridge; Vivian Alamain, Days) dogs when she went on vacation,” Reeves recalls.
By 1985, the Perkins family was being phased out, so Reeves had to figure out her next move. “I was so sad when they said they were getting rid of the whole Perkins family,” she recalls. “And I thought, ‘Well, okay, I’ll go back to being a dancer in New York.’”
But fate had other plans. “Days came up,” she relays. “But my suitcases were packed. I was ready to go back to New Jersey. And they said, ‘Well, we just have this one audition.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know. I just really want to go home.’ And they said, ‘Just go in and read. You can still go home.’”
The rest is history. ‘I went in, and they called that afternoon and said, ‘We want to offer you a three-year contract, and you start next week,’” she marvels. “It was quick. I remember auditioning with Michael Weiss [Mike Horton], who the cutest ever, and he was like, ‘You’re gonna get it, you’re gonna get it.’ And I was like, ‘But I really want to go home to New Jersey.’”
As she looks back on her big break on Santa Barbara, she’s thankful for the opportunity. “It was part of this bigger picture of getting me to Los Angeles to ultimately be on Days,” she reflects.