Five Things That Happened On June 20 In Soap History

In 1987, Jess Walton made her Y&R debut as Jill, succeeding Brenda Dickson. Walton recalled to Soap Opera Digest in 2023, "My agent called me up one day and said, ‘They’re looking for a new Jill,’ and this was really sudden. I had already made a tape of my best scenes on Capitol [where she played Kelly], so that was sent over to Y&R, where it sat on someone’s desk because he had never heard of me and thought Jess Walton was a guy. So he was looking and looking and looking for a Jill and somebody said, ‘Well, what about Jess Walton?’ So then he looked at the tape and he called me, so I went in to meet him that same day and I got the job."

In 1994, Tom Horton passed away on Days of Our Lives following the real-life passing of Macdonald Carey, who had played the role since the show's premiere in 1965. In the storyline, Alice Horton discovered her husband's death. In 2015, Carey's castmate Susan Seaforth Hayes (Julie) remembered Carey fondly to Soap Opera Digest, saying, "Mac had the glory of having been a movie star for a long time. That presence anchored the show, the curiosity factor for people to tune in and see him. He had an ease about him, a grandeur about him, a classiness that was another ingredient that was special for the show.”

In 2003 on Young and Restless, Jill Foster Abbott raced to try to prevent her son, Billy Abbott (Ryan Brown) from marrying Mackenzie Browning (Kelly Kruger), Katherine Chancellor's granddaughter, because she had just learned that Katherine was her own birth mother, making Billy and Mac blood-related! When she got to the mansion where the wedding was taking place, though, she saw the limo peeling away, whisking the newlyweds to a hotel to consummate their union. In the end, the marriage was annulled, though Jill and Kay ultimately turned out not to be mother and daughter.

In 2012 on General Hospital, Damian Spinelli (Bradford Anderson) and Maxie Jones (who was being temporarily played by Jen Lilley) had it out at Kelly's after Spinelli blabbed that Maxie's new husband, Matt Hunter, was responsible for Lisa Niles's death in an effort to stop Maxie from going to prison for the crime. Maxie was far from grateful and told Spinelli to delete her contact info from his phone. Hurt, Spinelli told his ex he wasn "done wasting his time" trying to protect her.

In 2023 on General Hospital, Sam McCall (Kelly Monaco) blasted her ex, Drew Cain (Cameron Mathison), who had decided to cop a plea deal in the charges of insider trading he was facing, which would come with a six-month prison sentence. "So you're going to prison so Carly doesn't have to," Sam snapped. Drew wanted Sam's help in breaking the news to their daughter, Scout, and Sam bristled, "I don't know how we would explain to our 6-year-old daughter that you are not only leaving her again, but this time, it's your choice."