Days of Our Lives Preview: Steve Burton Reveals the *Real* Reason for Harris’ Comeback

The Emmy winner gave viewers an all-access pass to his character’s head.

Ahead of his March 16 return to Days of Our Lives, Steve Burton told all about Harris and his intentions to a dear old friend: Wally Kurth, who played Ned to Burton’s Jason on General Hospital and now divides his time between that role and Justin on Peacock’s only soap (so far!).

Those Were the Days

First, the Emmy winner recalled Harris’ backstory — with a little help from Kurth, who cued up a clip from 1988 in which Harris flirted with Eve Donovan, the ex-hooker with whom he’d bet his high-school classmates he could score. “Wow, that was helium,” Burton exclaimed upon hearing his voice back then. “I took helium before the scene.

“My hair is amazing, I will say that,” he added, noting the ’do that would’ve made a Pretty in Pink-era James Spader envious. “I think it’s an effect. I looked like I was 10, and I was 17.”

“How you doin’?”

Credit: NBC screenshot

But we digress. After Eve found out about the cruel trick that had first gotten Harris interested in her, she gave him the heave-ho, and he didn’t show his face in Salem again until 2022 (when he resurfaced on Days of Our Lives’ spinoff, Beyond Salem). “The long and short of it” on that show, Burton explained, “was Megan Hathaway kidnapped me, brainwashed me to get these three things — the stones, the rocks, the penguins… ”

Prisms, Steve. Prisms. Anyway, “I was supposed to act like I was falling for Hope because supposedly she had one of them,” he continued. And the act went so well that “we fell for each other.”

Then, Megan being the demon spawn of Stefano DiMera and all, her henchman “was supposed to get rid of Hope,” Burton said, “and I couldn’t.” (Whew.)

Unfamiliar with Hamilton’s “I Am Not Throwin’ Away My Shot.”

Credit: Peacock screenshot

Unfinished Business

What brings Harris back to town is simple… and, ironically, hella complicated. He “is coming back for redemption, because of all the bad things he did,” said Burton. “He wants to make it right. That’s why he’s ‘coming home’ to Salem.”

While it sounds like a juicy storyline is in store for the actor, there is one aspect of it that he would change if he could. Harris Michaels, he laughed, is the “worst name in daytime history. Not a winning name.”

Maybe we should introduce him to Thorne Forrester from Bold & Beautiful or remind him of Boobsie Caswell from Young & Restless. Since Burton didn’t exactly achieve maximum impact when he was first on Days of Our Lives, let’s look back at more soap MVPs’ less-than-starmaking daytime debuts in the below photo gallery.

Video: YouTube/Days of Our Lives