‘Days of our Lives’ Star Rachel Boyd Teases Sophia’s Shocking Return: ‘Chaos Will Follow!’

Rachel Boyd returns to Days of our Lives on Friday, October 9, five months after her character, Sophia Choi, was presumed dead.

Boyd had no idea what the future held for Sophia when she filmed her final episodes in 2025 but knew there was always a chance her character wasn’t really dead.

“I remember hearing that nobody really dies in Salem,” Boyd says. “But I also wanted to treat that storyline as a real ending and do it justice as if that’s the last time you would ever see Sophia. I had the meeting with producers during a time when Sophia had been stuck in Bayview [sanitarium] for months of filming. I was itching to move on from that, so when this big and interesting storyline was presented to me, I couldn’t have been more excited.”

In her final story during her initial run, Sophia, who had manipulated Holly Jonas (Ashley Puzemis), Tate Black (Leo Howard) and Rachel Black (Lorelei Olivia Mote) for months, tried to kill Johnny DiMera (Carson Boatman) at Kristen DiMera’s (Stacy Haiduk) behest. Kristen then struck Sophia in the head with a rock and pushed her into a watery grave. Though Sophia’s body was never found, she was declared dead, and Boyd accepted that it might be the end of her time on Days.

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“I didn’t know when I’d be asked back,” she shares. “I knew that I felt satisfied with how I left the character and the open-endedness of it all. As the actor, I feel very protective of Sophia. I only wanted to reopen the story if I felt it was meaningful and necessary. Noel [Maxam, co-executive producer] and I had a call, and when he told me what they had planned for Sophia’s return, I was so thrilled and said yes immediately.”

Keeping Sophia’s fate a secret meant Boyd got to watch the audience speculate about what might have really happened to her. “It was so fun to read some of the conspiracy theories online from the audience,” she says. “Some of them were wild, like one said I was being held in a tube underground and going to be brought back to life by Dr. Rolf [Richard Wharton]. Reading them made me laugh because it seemed like I was the only person who believed Sophia was really dead!”

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And Boyd is well aware that her alter ego hasn’t always been an audience favorite. “I think Sophia has been a polarizing character for viewers,” Boyd allows. “I had never worked on a series before where the reception of your character can be so different every episode. It became hard to see people having shifting opinions and being vocal about it. I had to stop looking at that stuff just to focus on how I wanted to portray Sophia.”

Stepping away from Days gave Boyd some much-needed time to decompress from the emotional toll of playing such a complex character. “I think after doing all of that I needed to have a break,” she reflects. “I made a small memorial of Sophia’s things that I took home with me from set, with flowers and a little ‘tombstone’ I made on the back of a takeout box from the commissary. Some of my friends in the cast and crew wrote me letters, and I included those, too. I wanted to be ritualistic about letting it all go because I didn’t know when I would return.”

The break also gave Boyd a chance to reflect on how much she had learned during her first daytime experience. “As crazy as some storylines can be, working on a soap opera is truly a boot camp in acting because you’re given one take and you have to tackle really hard circumstances,” she points out. “Giving birth in my bedroom alone, penning a suicide note, or even attempting to murder someone by blowing him up are all things a younger version of myself would be so intimidated by. But I learned that preparation is everything and as long as I do the hard work before I show up to set, then I am capable of it.”

But even during Boyd’s time away, Salem wasn’t far from her thoughts. “Since I had moved to LA from Toronto for this show, my entire life here was around it,” she explains. “So, the studio really felt like my second home and a safe space. I missed seeing my friends and the comfort of that environment. But it was also a good opportunity for me to explore living in LA more independently.”

Corday Productions/Days of our Lives

Once she returned to the set, there was little time to ease back into the rhythm of the soap. “When I came back, there was really no getting back into the swing of things,” Boyd recalls. “It was more like being thrown into the deep end, which honestly worked for me. I enjoy working under pressure and with momentum.”

Her first scenes back will put Sophia right in the middle of the action. On Friday’s episode, Kristen DiMera (Stacy Haiduk) encounters Sophia at Kay’s diner in Paducah, Kentucky, where she is working as a waitress and using the alias Amelia. Boyd says she made some slight adjustments to reflect where Sophia is now.

“I knew I wanted her to feel distinctly different,” she says. “I’ve always tried to keep the character constantly evolving and changing as she experiences new things and responds to trauma. But now that the audience hasn’t seen her for six months, I had a great opportunity to fill in those blanks for myself and come back in a whole new way.”

Viewers will see those changes right away. “I wanted her to come back stronger than ever,” Boyd adds. “Now that she’s survived a near-death experience and kept herself alive and hidden for six months, this version of Sophia is going to be much more independent and a fighter.”

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Sophia’s reunion with Kristen is bound to be complicated, particularly given how their last encounter ended. But Boyd sees something more than revenge driving her character. “I think Sophia is intrigued by her more than she is scared or vengeful,” she observes. “Outside of the Salem backdrop, they kind of both need each other.”

Boyd was happy to have the opportunity to work alongside Haiduk again. “I really can’t sing her praises enough,” Boyd enthuses. “She’s funny, smart, warm, outrageously creative and just such a joy to act with. I learn so much just by watching her work and also how she conducts herself professionally.”

As for Sophia’s other relationships, Boyd teases that Sophia will be less focused on Holly and Tate this time around. “I think they will always hold a tender place in her heart, but this version of Sophia isn’t going to be primarily driven by revenge on Holly or getting Tate to love her,” she reveals.

And as she begins her new chapter on Days, Boyd isn’t giving away too much but promises her return will have an impact.

“I can’t say exactly what is going to happen, but as long as Sophia’s alive, chaos will follow!” she previews.

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