‘Days of Our Lives’: AlexAnn Hopkins Details Joy’s Return — With Alex’s Baby!

AlexAnn Hopkins returns to Days of Our Lives as Joy Wesley on Friday, April 24, and she has a surprise in tow: a baby girl named Kelsey.

Joy first came to Salem in 2024, but her story was cut short in March 2025 when Joy moved back to New York after discovering that she was pregnant by Alex Kiriakis (Robert Scott Wilson). For Hopkins, the invitation to come back was welcome, though not entirely unexpected.

“It was left very open-ended,” she points out. “When I left, there was a lot of stuff up in the air of what they were going to do or how they wanted it to go. I felt good about the fact that it wasn’t, ‘She died and she’s off the show.’ They left it like, ‘She’s definitely pregnant with somebody on the show who has a big part,’ so I was assuming that at some point it would happen, but at the same time, you never really know. So, I was not necessarily expecting the call when I did get it, but I was expecting that it would come at some point, and I’m so glad that it did.”

Hopkins was overseas when she got the news. “I was actually in London; I spent a lot of time over there during my breaks,” she explains. “I got a call from my agent, and they were like, ‘How do you feel about going back to Days?’ I kind of breathed out a sigh of relief, almost, and said, ‘Yes, please, I would love that.’ So that was nice. I got to finish off my trip knowing that I was coming back to a job, which you can’t beat as an actor, because that’s not always the case. So, I was really looking forward to it.”

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Though she had been gone for about a year, being on the Days soundstages again felt instantly familiar. “It was so nice to be back,” she shares. “Truly, the time passed so quickly that coming back to everybody was just so comfortable. Everybody here is so great and was so welcoming the first time around, and I just felt like I was coming back to a family. It was really, really nice because I was coming back as myself and as Joy, being like, ‘I’m back in town,’ so it was kind of cool that I got to experience that as myself, the actor, and as the character.”

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Beyond rejoining the show, the structure of the job itself gave Hopkins a sense of stability. “It definitely takes getting used to, but I was honestly dying for it because being an actor, you go a long time without work and all of a sudden you have no sense of schedule or anything like that,” she says. “So being able to have somewhere to be, doing what I want to do, regardless of how much they throw at me in one day, I’d rather be doing that than anything else. I live in the same area, so my commute is so short, and I really couldn’t ask for a better office space.”

Still, stepping back into Joy’s mindset required some recalibration. “I already had a foundation of who she was, but there’s been so much more to work with this time around that I’ve also been able to expand who she is,” Hopkins explains. “It felt familiar to come back to, but also there was still a lot to figure out with her and who she is.”

A major part of that evolution is motherhood, which has reshaped the character in meaningful ways. “Joy really felt a lot younger then than she does now,” Hopkins observes. “And not even because time has passed, but just because she’s a mother now, so that in and of itself makes her a bit more grown. But when she was here the first time around, she was really in a lost time of her life, looking for somewhere to belong and wearing these different hats to see who her community was, who she could trust, what kind of job she even wanted. Now, she really has a sense of purpose, which is this baby. She comes across as much more womanly now, and I’ve been really enjoying being able to play her that way.”

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That sense of purpose is what drives Joy’s return to town. “Well, she has a baby, and if there’s one thing about Joy, she has an agenda,” teases Hopkins. “It comes from a good place, but she comes back because Alex is the dad and she wants to give her daughter a chance that I don’t think she ever got growing up.”

Once back in Salem, look for Joy to reconnect with familiar faces while building new connections. “I work with Rob and Abigail [Klein, Stephanie Johnson] a lot,” Hopkins previews. “I got to work with Rob a lot the last time around, but not as much with Abigail, and I absolutely adore her. They’ve put me in so many people’s lives, whether it be just passing through or more permanent stays and storylines, and I’ve gotten to work with a lot more people this time around, like Susan [Seaforth Hayes, Julie Williams] and Suzanne [Rogers, Maggie Kiriakis]. That’s been so cool because they’re two of the people who have made this show what it is.”

Like many actors before her, Hopkins is experiencing the unique lag between filming at Days and seeing the work play out on screen. “It is hilarious, just because we shoot so far in advance, that my first episode hasn’t even aired,” she muses. “I feel like Joy has evolved so much since I started back, so feeling like we’re starting from the beginning is kind of funny because it feels like such old news to me.”

Even so, she’s eager for viewers to see the next chapter of Joy’s story. “I’m excited,” she enthuses. “Joy holds her own a bit more this time around. Last time, we definitely saw her edge and that she had a toughness to her, but her being more of a mama bear now, I think that gives her a lot of confidence to really go for what she wants, and everybody will see what that is. Her main goal is just to protect her daughter and give her the best experience in life possible.”

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