Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty
“I had always spoken to my dad about my dreams,” wrote Banus, who played Gabi Hernandez, in an essay forToday. “He knew my ultimate goal is to create amazing stories and cultivate characters — to be on the big screen. That was part of why I walked away. He didn’t stay to see his dreams realized — the depression took over. I need to reach mine for him, and me, and our family.”
Li Shin (Remington Hoffman) and Gabi Hernandez DiMera (Camila Banus) inDays of Our Lives: Beyond Salem.Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock
When Banus was 19 years old and just embarking on her time onDays, her mother called her to break the news of Banus’s father’s death.
“I handled it the best way I could as a 19-year-old, which was … not to tell anybody,” she recalled. “A couple of days later I returned to set and life moved on. I buried my grief, I buried my anger. I buried my sadness. I put on a smile for a long time.”
Therapy, Banus’s husbandMarlon Aquinoand her time onDayshelped her cope.
Banus wrote that losing her father “made me a more empathetic person” and “changed the way that I interact with people.”
“I want them to know that I care,” she continued. “I want them to know they are wanted, important, needed.”
The actress had the support of Aquino, her mom and her sister — a.k.a. her “tripod” — when she decided to step away fromDays.
“They understood,” Banus wrote. “They’d seen me come home from work crying because I couldn’t shake off something bad that had happened to Gabi. They’d seen me memorizing 60 pages a day and feeling like my head was going to explode. Their support is monumental and it’s what makes me feel safe enough to take this risk.”
Banus referred toDaysas a “dream job” and hopes more await. “I want to leave a legacy for my family, honoring the sacrifices that my Cuban immigrant parents made for me so that I could pursue those dreams,” she wrote.
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Also contributing to her decision to leaveDays, which streams on Peacock, Banus wants to become a mother.
“My husband and I are trying to start a family, hopefully,” she toldTheWrap. “And that’s another big factor in possibly just slowing down for a little bit and seeing kind of where this time takes me. But I’m also open to other opportunities and ready for big things. I’m just ready for something different.”
source: people.com
