Who Is Sydney DiMera on Days of our Lives? Portrayer Sydney Malakeh Speaks Out
Sydney DiMera returned to Days of our Lives in the September 10 episode, with the role now played by actress Sydney Malakeh. In a new interview with TV Insider, the actress opened up about what fans can expect from EJ (Dan Feuerriegel) and Sami’s (Alison Sweeney) daughter and how she feared she was going to be fired from her new gig during her first week on set.
What Is Sydney DiMera Really Like?
Sydney was last seen in the 2021 DAYS spinoff movie Days of our Lives: A Very Salem Christmas as a preteen played by Evelyn Stephenson. Now that she’s older, fans will really get to see how the young woman has grown up. But which of her parents does she take after more?
“She has, I think, equal parts of both Sami and EJ,” Malakeh mused. “Sydney’s a strong girl. She wants to forge her own path. She’s a leader. She has a big heart, and she wants to do good, and she wants to be loved. It’s been super fun to get to find her myself through the scripts.”
Malakeh previously appeared in Lifetime movies like Cheer Camp Killer and primetime series like Sex Lives of College Girls and Grey’s Anatomy, but arrived at DAYS with no prior experience with soaps. So as she struggled with daytime’s rapid shooting schedule, the actress wasn’t sure just how long she would last in her new role.
“For the first week, I was losing it,” she admitted. “I truly was having so much anxiety that I was going to be fired that I asked the producer to have a meeting because I [was] worried that I was doing an awful job.”
Fortunately, her fears were quickly allayed by her producer, who told her, “‘No, absolutely not. We were looking for our Sydney, and you’re our Sydney.’ So that was really nice to hear, but it was truly humbling… I have so much respect for actors and soap actors, and my respect for DAYS actors, specifically, has grown exponentially.”
As she’s settled into the role, Malakeh is embracing what it means to be playing a part with such rich ties to DAYS history. “[Waking] up and knowing I have a responsibility to this story, this character, and this legacy has given me a lot of purpose,” she declared.
Share your first impressions of Malakeh’s Sydney DiMera in the comments below!
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