James Read Out At Days Of Our Lives As Clyde Weston

It looks like crime no longer pays for Clyde Weston on Days of Our Lives, which means that it’s the end of the line for his portrayer, James Read, who first appeared on the show in 2014. Clyde found himself on the wrong end of Catharina’s gun on the Wednesday, December 11 episode of the Peacock soap and Digest can confirm the actor is out — at least for now.

Bad To The Bone

When the actor was first approached about the role of villainous Clyde, “I was instantly and enormously attracted to the character in the material I was sent,” he told Soap Opera Digest in 2014. “Clyde is not the kind of role that throughout my career people have initially thought of me for. For all these years, many people’s first awareness of me was in [the hit TV miniseries] North and South. I really played the physical hero. Since that initial introduction to a huge audience, most of my roles have been like that. I was extremely flattered that the people at DAYS would think of me for this. For a lot of producers and directors, I wouldn’t be the first name that comes to mind, because it’s not the kind of role that I have been associated with.” He described Clyde as “an enigma. He’s the kind of guy that some people feel they can trust to the ends of the Earth, while others wouldn’t answer the door to let him in. Clyde has an element of danger, but he can also be extremely charming. Clyde is a bit of a chameleon.”

Early on, Clyde was romantically linked to Kate, played by Lauren Koslow, and Read credited the veteran star with helping him acclimate to DAYS’s rapid-fire production schedule. “She’s terrific,” he said of Koslow. “She went out of her way to make sure that I was comfortable. I was so grateful to have the bulk of my beginning scenes with her. Lauren Koslow is a genuine pro.”

At that time, Read expressed an openness to a long run on the soap, telling Digest, “If they keep up the writing at the high level that they’ve established, I can’t foresee me ever getting tired of it. The complexity inherent in soap opera storytelling blows my mind. The writers have so many characters and so many storylines to weave in and out. As an actor, I look for consistency of character, a consistent point of view and the kind of behavior. That’s been with this character right from the start. It’s been such a won- derful blessing.”

But given the dastardly deeds Clyde would go on to commit, from drug-dealing to murder and many crimes in between, Read later admitted that he was not counting on a long-term stay. He told Soap Opera Digest in 2022, “I don’t think anybody thought Clyde would be long for Salem,” noting that he assumed it would be “a six-month thing. I was happy with that because I had never done daytime before, and I wasn’t sure I would like it. It was a way to get my feet wet and decide whether or not it appealed to me.” That it did turn into a multi-year assignment was a thrill for Read, who beamed, “It’s worked out great.”

The actor came and went multiple times over the course of his decade-long run (during which time Read briefly played Chase and Finn’s father, Gregory, on General Hospital, before the role was recast with Gregory Harrison), and Clyde spent a lot of his life on the show behind bars. In 2019, when Read made another Clyde comeback, he observed to Digest that with Clyde now a convicted felon, “any pretense of civility is kind of stripped away. He doesn’t have to try to be liked by anybody, especially with [son] Ben. What you see is what you get. Clyde has a certain amount of power in prison, too, and in many ways he’s quite comfortable being there. He’s certainly familiar with it and figured out how to get by and how to thrive, in a way; do the best that one can under the circumstances.”

In 2022, when Clyde was released from prison, Read chuckled to Digest, “I’m real happy not to be wearing orange anymore. While Clyde was in prison, most of my scenes had been with Rob [Scott Wilson, Ben] who plays my son. I love working with him, but it’s been nice to reacquaint myself with the rest of the cast. They’re putting Clyde in lots of situations with characters he hasn’t seen in a long time or, in some cases, never before. That’s been really fun.”

Are you sad to see Clyde go — and do you think he’s really gone for good? Sound off in the comments below!