Jake is a brand-new character on Days of our Lives, but he has a familiar face. Brandon Barash returned to the long-running soap in April 2020 — but not as Stefan DiMera, the character he previously played on the show. Jake is still a mystery in Salem, which has many fans wondering if he’s actually Stefan. Brandon Barash spoke with Soaps.com about what’s ahead for Jake.
“It will be revealed who he is,” Brandon said. “What I will say is my first month or two back on the canvas is a lot of… Is he or isn’t he [Stefan]? You may start to see Jake grapple with that a bit, too. It’s a fun journey that they wrote and hats off to them for the way they did it.”
Even though Jake and Stefan seem totally different on the surface, Brandon noted that they do have something in common. “When it came down to it, Stefan wasn’t made of the stuff to make a good family man,” Brandon continued. “Jake wants that, but he makes bad choices. He’s acting out of a good place, but makes these peripheral choices that come back to bite him in the ass. So that’s a similar thing that they share — they are both well-intentioned in their minds and can make poor decisions as a result of that.”
Brandon took over the role of Stefan DiMera from Tyler Christopher in 2019. Stefan was killed off in Oct. 2019. Prior to Days of our Lives, Brandon was best known in the soap world as Johnny Zacchara on General Hospital. Days of our Lives airs weekdays at 1 p.m. on NBC.