![abigail klein as stephanie and blake berris as everett on days of our lives.](https://www.soapoperadigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/abigail-klein-blake-berris-days-of-our-lives-hp-1024x509.jpg)
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Courtesy of Connie’s poisoning, Everett took his last breath on the August 1 episode of Days of Our Lives, marking the end of Blake Berris’s run in the role, which kicked off in October 2023. No one was sadder to see him exit the canvas than his leading lady, Abigail Klein (Stephanie), who enjoyed creating the Everett/Stephanie dynamic with the actor and incorporating his alternate personality, Bobby, into the mix.
Hard To Say Goodbye
“What did I enjoy the most about that relationship?” ponders Klein. “Well, it’s all intertwined with how much I enjoyed working with Blake. He’s just so spectacular as an actor and a person.”
Being part of the complicated story meant a lot to Klein as an actress. “I could talk about this all day,” she says. “It has been my favorite storyline thus far. I really cannot say enough about Blake Berris. I can’t say enough about working with him. I think I grew as an actor working with him, which is awesome. He played Everett and Bobby so well. Everett was this sweet, dreamy boyfriend, and Bobby was sort of this mysterious bad boy. Blake really liked to separate [the two characters], and he just knocked it out of the park. He’s someone that I could never get tired of watching. We all love Blake Berris. I’m just besotted with him. That’s really it,” she adds with a chuckle.
Klein and Berris put a lot of time and care into creating Stephanie and Everett. “We tried to really build a relationship, because Stephanie and Everett, their dating relationship, wasn’t shown. It had all happened in Seattle,” points out Klein. “So we really tried to make a point to build it in subtext or in whatever we were shooting. We tried to show how much they really cared about each other. Filming those last scenes with Blake were so gut-wrenching both as an actor and as Stephanie. I wanted to show just how much Everett meant to her to the point that even later on, when Stephanie’s only talking about Everett, emotion still bubbles up for her. So it was important for me to at least try as much as I could to show how deeply they cared for each other, even if the audience didn’t get to see a lot of that stuff. I wanted to pay tribute to Stephanie and Everett and their relationship, and I also wanted to pay tribute to Blake as an actor and the work that we did together.”
Aside from the two characters’ coupling, Klein also misses the triangle that was created with Elia Cantu’s Jada. “I wish we could have filmed even more of that,” admits Klein. “Because I do think, and this is a testament to Blake Berris, that he really made Bobby likable. And Bobby and Jada had chemistry. You were like, ‘Wait. I want to see more of that.’ That’s what was so fun. I think the audience has really loved this storyline, which makes me happy. We loved it too. So I’ll miss that. I also loved the way that they wrote Stephanie and Jada, who were friends through this. It was all very traumatic for each of them for their own reasons dealing with Bobby, but I found it really compelling that these girls, as much as they were suffering, were a united front about it. That was refreshing. I think it’s true to their characters and really meaningful. I love the girl power of it all too.”
With Everett gone has Klein given any thought to what’s next for Stephanie; specifically if there’s anyone on the canvas she thinks might be a good match for her character? “Well, I think Stephanie should make an appointment with Marlena first,” notes Klein with a laugh. “That’s what I would say. But gosh, I do admire what a romantic Stephanie is. I know that she really wants to get to that next phase of her life. I mean, who’s single? Maybe somebody else could enter the orbit.”
Of course, Stephanie’s ex, Alex, is single now too, having parted ways with the duplicitous Theresa. So that might be a possibility. “There’s a friendship with Alex,” contends Klein. “So that’s totally appealing. And if he’s single, hey, that’s another green flag.”