The air on NBC’s lot is thick with memories as a living legend steps into the frame of Salem’s story and opens a window onto the bones of a world that has outlived many of its own stars. Susan Seforth Hayes, the woman who has embodied Julie Williams since the late 1960s, invites us to glimpse not just a celebrity’s day but the very heartbeat of a shared childhood: decades of episodes, decades of emotion, all coiled within the brick and plaster of a place that has become a sanctuary for generations of fans.

Her message arrives as a tender, almost intimate confession, posted with the warmth of someone who knows how to hold onto a memory and share it with tenderness. Aging isn’t a retreat from life here; it is a map of a life richly textured, layered with scenes that have shaped who she is and what Days of Our Lives has become. The joy she finds in growing older isn’t about slowing down; it’s about carrying forward a history that still glows with color, even as the world around it has changed in astonishing ways.

The setting of this revelation is more than a backstage anecdote; it is a pilgrimage through time. Susan leads us along the very corridors where her earliest footsteps met the footlights, a path that begins on a stage in a building now celebrated as the Burbank Studios. What some might see as a mere sound stage is reframed here as a living monument—the cradle of television’s golden era, the place where the black-and-white of yesterday learned to burst into the full spectrum of color. It is a space that has housed more than just sets; it has housed memories, triumphs, and the quiet electricity of live performance that once defined an industry.

Susan’s tour is not a simple stroll; it is a reverent journey into the anatomy of a long-running dream. With each pause, the walls offer a whispered history: the rafters, the pulleys, the careful choreography of lights and sound that make every take a leap into another life. The roof, the balcony, the narrow ledge high above the floor—these are not mere details; they are the landmarks of a child who grew into a symbol, a performer who never stopped listening to the orchestra of a set that never truly silences.

In her hands, the tour becomes a bridge between two ages: the past she brushed with as a child actress and the present where she stands as a legend who has watched time bend around Days of Our Lives. The journey upward into the high, precarious spaces of Stage 4 and beyond is described with the precise awe of someone who has studied every heartbeat of a stage’s anatomy. She writes of a place where the dust of decades hangs like a veil, where the infrastructure—the very bones of the building—still hums with the electricity of the first color broadcasts that introduced a nation to a new way of seeing.

The memory of Susan stepping onto a stage as a Queen Elizabeth I of Hallmark Hall of Fame at eight years old is a thread that she carries forward into every scene she has performed since. The stage, the lights, the carpet that wears its own stories into its fibers—these are the same elements that cradle Julie Williams and, by extension, the audience that has traveled with her through the years. It is a reminder that the magic of Days of Our Lives is not merely in its dialogue or its plot twists, but in the shared space where actor and audience meet the myth of a town that feels both intimate and infinite.

The relay of time through the set is captured in her careful notes about NBC’s evolution—the color experiments, the rebirth of a medium, the enduring idea that a single stage can hold a nation’s dreams. The revelation that Days of Our Lives has remained the last NBC-affiliated production in the sprawling lot makes the tour a testament to resilience: a show that refused to vanish as others receded, instead growing roots deeper into the soil of a place that has become a shrine for fans who learned to tell their own stories through the lives played out in Salem.

Through Susan’s lens, the familiar façades—the Horton entryway, the Brady Pub, the Deveraux mansion, the iconic corners that fans kiss with memory—are not background scenery but living witnesses to a culture that has survived beyond the turn of seasons. The stage’s walls hold a mosaic of laughter, heartbreak, and revelation, and Susan’s reflections illuminate how those spaces continue to shape not just performances, but relationships—the timeless ritual of gathering, watching, and feeling alongside a community that has grown up with these characters.

Her appreciation for the enduring nature of Days of Our Lives becomes a quiet anthem: behind the glamour and the drama lies a physical place that has become a companion to generations. The stage, with its echoing rooms and its carefully built streets, offers a steadying sense of continuity in a world where media shifts like sand and audiences drift toward the next new thing. Yet here, the promise of Salem remains constant—the promise that a story can be told with honesty, patience, and a depth that makes viewers feel seen.

Susan’s gratitude—toward Randy, the guardians of the lot, and the colleagues who share this long voyage—feels both personal and universal. It is a salute to a profession that thrives on collaboration, timing, and the almost alchemical ability to turn a page into a life, a life into a memory that will outlive the moment of broadcast. She invites fans to see beyond the glitter of daytime and recognize the quiet alchemy of a real place where decades of work have fused with decades of affection to form a single, shimmering continuum.

What emerges from this intimate glimpse is a tribute not only to a performer’s tenure but to the idea of longevity as a creative force. The theater of Days of Our Lives is not just a plot engine; it is a cultural artifact, a corridor of shared experience, a thread that binds viewers who began watching as children and now have their own families to share the show with. The Burbank Studios, under the banner of a new era, becomes more than a studio—it’s a sanctuary where the past remains present and the future holds a steady light for those who choose to walk its halls.

In the end, Susan Seforth Hayes presents a portrait of devotion: to a character who has lived for decades, to a town that has lived through every shade of emotion, and to a stage that has become a compass, pointing toward memory, craft, and enduring storytelling. Her words remind us that television, when crafted with care, becomes a public memory, a shared room where the past and present sit side by side, listening to the same quiet heartbeat of a world that loves its stories enough to keep them alive, day after day, year after year.

And so she thanks the guardians of that space—the guides who reveal the unseen corners, the colleagues who keep the machine running with artistry and grace, and the fans who keep faith with Salem’s light. The message is clear: Days of Our Lives isn’t merely a show; it is a continuum, a living archive where every doorway opened by Julie Williams’ generations of performers invites us to step in, listen closely, and remember that the magic of this grand stage endures because people continue to remember