Days of Our Lives is losing a main cast member — but the soap already has plans to recast the role.
Al Calderon‘s time as Javi Hernandez has come to an end, according to Deadline. The actor, 31, who played the role since 2024, is moving over to NBC’s Brilliant Minds. As a result, Calderon will be recast after the rest of his episodes air in May 2026.
“We do not comment on the contract status of our actors, but fans should not worry,” reps for Days of Our Lives told the outlet on Wednesday, July 30, about bringing in someone new to play the fan-favorite character. “Javi is alive and well in Salem.”
Calderon’s departure comes after Peyton Meyer wrapped up his arc on Days of Our Lives. The Friday, July 25, episode of the soap concluded Doug III’s journey in Salem, which came less than a year after the actor joined the cast. In December 2024, Meyer, 26, was introduced as Doug Sr.’s grandson after meeting his widow Julie at the cemetery.
Despite Meyer’s short-lived role, Days of Our Lives stars have grown used to saying goodbye to characters over the years. Days of Our Lives also mourned Drake Hogestyn‘s character, John Black, earlier this season after his death. (The actor passed away at age 70 from pancreatic cancer in September 2024.)
Calderon’s new gig will pair him with Zachary Quinto in one of NBC’s remaining shows. The medical drama, which premiered in September 2024, is inspired by the Oliver Sacks books The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars and follows a neurologist and his team of interns as they tackle challenging medical cases while dealing with their own relationships and mental health.
In addition to critical success, Quinto, 47, is making history on the hit procedural, playing the first openly gay character to lead a network medical series.
“I think the thing for me that is so significant about that is that it’s not significant at all. Actually, it’s not significant to the character,” Quinto said on The Drew Barrymore Show in December 2024. “It’s an aspect of who the character is and NBC was really open to and invested in this story, the value of this story in our contemporary culture and the conversations that are happening today in the society.”
Quinto noted that the role meant “so much” to him because it is based on Sacks, who died in 2015.
“He lived and worked primarily in the mid-20th century, and he was a gay man himself and was celibate for 35 years of his life,” he recalled. “When I found that out, I was like, ‘If you’re not somehow called to the clergy or living a life that restricts that, why would you ever make a choice like that?’ Then the more I learned about him and the more I read about him and the more that I observed why someone would make that decision, it became clear to me that it was because he didn’t feel he could be authentically himself and be afforded the same opportunities in his field of medicine. He knew he was designed to change the field of medicine, which he did.”
