Bill Hamilton’s (Timon Kyle Durrett) latest health crisis has not only landed him in the hospital on Beyond the Gates, but it also threatens to expose that his wife, Hayley Lawson Hamilton (Marquita Goings), is trying to kill him.
For months, Hayley has been slowly poisoning her husband as part of a long con she’s running with her cousin Randy Parker (Maurice P. Kerry). While Bill has sought medical attention in the past, this time it’s so serious that he went into cardiac arrest and got a pacemaker.
Bill may not have figured out that his young bride is to blame, but the people around him are getting closer to the truth. His family is already suspicious of Hayley and has been sharing information in an effort to figure out what kind of scheme she’s running with Bill. Still, the possibility that his wife could be involved isn’t even on Bill’s radar — but that may be changing.
“Timon is a bit sharper, but I think that Bill is blinded by ego and what he believes to be love,” says Durrett. “He hasn’t connected the dots where Hayley is involved, and I think, in part, it’s because he’s choosing not to. You don’t want to see it until you have to see it, and I think Bill is finally in a position where he’s starting to wonder how correct his former family and current family are about his situation. Not that he knows yet, but he doesn’t want to be made to feel or to seem like he made one of the biggest mistakes of his life. Bill is used to winning, and this feels like losing to him, and it’s just not good for him.”
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Though Hayley remains in Bill’s blind spot for now, his ex-wife, Dani Dupree (Karla Mosley), is coming into sharper focus. Bill and Dani’s old feelings have been resurfacing ever since their secret tryst in the elevator on the night of the tornado in June.
“Bill realizes that he should have made different choices,” Durrett acknowledges of his alter ego leaving Dani for Hayley. “He can’t deny his feelings for Dani. He’s still smitten by her, and he sees all of this support, despite his transgressions. No matter what he’s done, these people are still kind of in his corner when he’s in trouble.”
That support is prompting Bill to take a harder look at the choices that brought him to this point.
“Sometimes certain circumstances will make you change your behavior, change the way you think about things, change how you view your transgressions, and I think that Bill is starting to see his mistake of leaving Dani,” Durrett adds. “It’s getting to a point where he’s starting to listen to what his family is saying about Hayley. Now they’re in this hospital again, and now it’s more serious. And the reality, the gravity, the weight of all these little nuggets of things happening, I think he’s starting to put pieces to the puzzle together that he chose not to put together before.”
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Tellingly, the first person Bill asked to see once he was out of surgery was Dani, not his wife, and their tender interaction spoke volumes about where his heart lies.
“They were together way longer than he’s been with Hayley, and he trusts her,” Durrett explains. “Hayley can’t compare to Dani with regard to how Dani has held things down for Bill. She found his office. She helped build his practice. She took care of Chelsea [Hamilton, RhonniRose Mantilla] and Naomi [Hamilton Hawthorne, Arielle Prepetit] when Bill couldn’t or wouldn’t. She stood by him despite his philandering, so he feels like this person has a track record of being trustworthy and dependable, and he needs her now. Him asking for her gives him comfort, because she’s held him down for so long. He knows that she can do things that Hayley hasn’t proven herself capable of doing.”
Durrett teases that this latest crisis could spark some unexpected changes, not only in Bill himself, but in his relationships with the people closest to him.
“There’s an amending aspect, if you will,” he previews. “The fear of Bill being gone has brought about a closeness or rekindling with Dani, with Vernon [Dupree, Clifton Davis], with Anita [Dupree, Tamara Tunie] to a degree, with Ted [Richardson, Keith Robinson], his former brother-in-law, with his daughters. It’s bringing about a closeness that the audience may not have expected. A lot of eyes are being opened, some more quickly than Bill’s. But that newfound closeness with Bill and Dani and Naomi and Chelsea and the other Duprees helps to bring about more of an understanding of what’s really going on in Bill’s life with regard to all these health scares.”
CBS
For Durrett, the unexpected twists have extended beyond Bill’s storyline. Being part of the cast of daytime’s newest soap — and earning a Daytime Emmy nomination last month for Outstanding Supporting Actor — means more to him than he can express.
“Three years ago, you’d never have convinced me that I would be a soap opera star nominated for a Daytime Emmy,” he marvels. “That just wasn’t the trajectory that I thought I’d be on, and now that I’m here, it feels good. We’ve done 438 episodes in less than two calendar years, and that amount of work culminating into having these nominations [for the show], and new doors opening, it’s a brand-new feeling. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say it’s a wow factor to see parts of your dream come together, like pieces of a puzzle. It’s a cool feeling.”
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