‘Days of our Lives’: Who was Jensen Ackles on DOOL? (VIDEO)

Who was Jensen Ackles on Days of our Lives — do you remember when the Supernatural hunk played Eric Brady on the NBC soap opera? Take a look at our video on his run on the soap opera.

This is the transcript of our Days video looking back at her history on the NBC/Peacock soap. How much do you know?

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Who Was Jensen Ackles on Days of our Lives?

Hey there Peacock Soap fans. This is Soap Dirt on YouTube. And today, we are going to take a little blast from the Days of our Lives past. And we are gonna take a look back at who was Jensen Ackles when he was on DOOL.

If you don’t remember him off the top of your head, he is the hunk who played Dean Winchester for 15 seasons of Supernatural. But way back in the day, one of his first jobs as an actor was on Days of our Lives.

Let’s take a look back at some history. Jensen Ackles played a young adult, Eric Brady. His full name is Eric Roman Brady, because he’s named after his father, Roman Brady.

And his mother on the show is Marlena Evans and his twin sister is Sami Brady. Of course, now it’s Greg Vaughan in the role of Eric Brady, and he has played that role for a very long time.

But way back in the day, we got three years of Jensen Ackles as Eric Brady, and this was the appearance and the drama and everything that set up why Eric would turn to the priesthood. So it’s very exciting.

Jensen Scored 3 Daytime Emmy Nominations Playing Eric Brady on DOOL

Also exciting is that Jensen Ackles got three back to back Daytime Emmy Award nominations for his work as Eric Brady on Days of our Lives. He was nominated in 1998, 1999, and 2004 for Outstanding Younger Actor.

Unfortunately, he didn’t win any of those, but he was nominated. He was on Days of our Lives as Eric from 1997 to 2000. And he did more than 115 episodes. It’s just really exciting stuff.

If you are a longtime watcher of Days, you might remember him, but maybe you didn’t put it together with, oh, you know, that’s the grouchy hot guy from Supernatural.

So some of the other series that Jensen Ackles has been on, in addition to Days of our Lives and Supernatural. He had rolls on Dark Angel, Dawson’s Creek, and he most recently did a turn on Big Sky as Sheriff Beau Arlen.

Post Supernatural, he also serves as the showrunner on the prequel show The Winchesters with his wife Danneel Ackles. He also did a turn recently as Soldier Boy on The Boys. Which is this dark, gritty, kind of anti-superhero series on Amazon Prime.

And he plays this complete psycho named Soldier Boy. He’s a violent killer and he doesn’t age, and he did all these bad things in Vietnam. And it was a really fun turn. But what about Jensen Ackles on Days of our Lives?

Eric Brady from Before Recast Greg Vaughan on Days of our Lives

Let’s dig back into that. If you don’t remember, Eric and Sami are twins. Their parents are Roman Brady and Marlena Evans. And they’re twins who have always been this kind of yin-yang where Sami has always been chaos and trouble.

Eric was kind of, more light and calm. But he wasn’t always that way. As we see him now, he is struggling with darkness and it seems it’s inside of him. But overall, he’s been, you know, a really good guy.

Eric Brady and his twin Sami were born October 16th, 1984 on Days of our Lives. Then, they had several young actors, baby actors playing them. And at age nine they were SORASed to being a young adult.

SORAS is Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome, if you didn’t know. And they dialed back their birthdates from 1984 to 1977. So at that point, Eric Brady’s age exactly clocked that of Jensen Ackles.

So, the twins came back as young adults and they had, you know, just lots of dramatic storylines. There was a whole thing where Eric had been accused while he was away at school of molesting some girl. But it wasn’t him. It was this other friend.

And then there was drama with Sami. Sami almost got executed by lethal Injection. And he was trying to save her. It was just very, very messy.

Jensen Ackles Almost Gave up Acting Because of So Many Days Auditions

What’s really interesting about Jensen Ackles getting the role of Eric on Days of our Lives is that he mentioned that he had to go through multiple auditions. And it was this extensive and intensive audition experience.

And it was pushing him to the point where even questioned whether he wanted to be an actor. Fortunately, he got the role. And he definitely stuck with being an actor, since he’s still kicking butt at it today.

He was on the show from the summer of 1997 until the summer of 2000 when he landed a development deal over at the ABC Network. Now, Eric was off-screen after Jensen Ackles left the role until they cast Greg Vaughan, who has been on General Hospital.

He was over there. He’s a known actor, and they brought him back in November 2012 in the role. So the role set unfilled for 12 years after Jensen Ackles left.

Since then, for the past 11 years, Eric Brady has been front and center for the most part, with a few absences here and there. And remains a very popular character.

Eric & Nicole – Soulmates from the Start on Days of our Lives

And of course, Eric’s big love of his life was Nicole Walker. Back in the Jensen Ackles days is when Nicole and Eric first met. She was a waitress at Java Cafe and that’s where he met her. And then Eric got a gig as a photographer at Countess Wilhelmina.

And he hired Nicole to be a model there. So they worked together and we just kind of saw a refresh of that in 2022, 2023 when they had scenes as model and photographer together. And that kind of sparked things.

But in the end, as Nicole does, she broke his heart. And that was part of what was on his mind when he left Salem. Then off screen, they wrote that he had become a priest.

So when they recast the role with Greg Vaughan and he came back, he had the collar on and the priest frock. Now, one more really interesting thing about Jensen Ackles, and it’s a reference back to his Days of our Lives period.

Supernatural Did an Homage to Jensen Ackles on Days of our Lives

I don’t know if you watched Supernatural. But if you did, you may remember this in Season 6, Episode 15, which aired back in 2011. More than a decade after Jensen Ackles had left the role of Eric Brady.

His character, Dean Winchester and his brother Sam Winchester kinda went through this portal thing and they came out in this alternate dimension. And in that alternate dimension, they were both actors.

It was this very funny, very meta episode. If you’d seen it, you’d remember it. It’s so good. It’s worth just going back and just watching that episode if you’re a Jensen Ackles fan, even if you didn’t watch Supernatural.

So in the role, they’re both actors in that episode. And they showed a clip of Jensen from his time on Days of our Lives, and that was part of his alter ego, Dean’s alter ego in this alternate dimension.

If you’ve heard that Jensen Ackles was on Days of our Lives, now you know all about it. And if you want to see a look back at him in the role, you can check out that season 6 episode 15 of Supernatural.

Or you can look around YouTube and there’s plenty of clips of Jensen Ackles playing Eric Brady. And we dropped some pictures in here for you to enjoy. Thanks for listening.

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