This year has already been a memorable one for Stacy Haiduk. Not only did she return to The Young and the Restless as Patty Williams in 2026, but she also earned her first Lead Actress nomination at the Daytime Emmys for her work as Kristen DiMera on Days of our Lives.
“I’m just so grateful,” Haiduk says. “Every moment I have the chance to just look up at the universe and say thank you, I take it. I was not expecting this year to go the way it has, so I’m pleasantly surprised at the journey that I’ve been on.”
This marks Haiduk’s fourth nomination. She was previously nominated three times in the Supporting Actress category — twice for Days and once for Y&R — but this is her first recognition in Lead Actress.
“Being nominated is always such an exciting time, but I think this is just a harder category, so it’s really nice,” she observes. “It just really made my day just seeing that because of all the work I’ve done, and the work everyone has done. I took a chance, and it paid off.”
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To showcase her work, Haiduk submitted scenes centered on Kristen and her daughter, Rachel Blake (Alice Halsey), after Rachel shot her uncle EJ DiMera (Dan Feuerriegel), and Kristen took the rap for it.
“I got a wonderful gift of having a mother-daughter story,” she explains. “It was a lot of scenes of taking the blame for Rachel and going to prison, and there’s a lot of emotion in all that. When I get to work, I’m so excited, and then when I get a storyline like the one I did, I just embrace it, and I want to give it my all. I’m grateful that the writers like writing for me. I think Kristen is an amazing character. I feel like the writers did her justice with this storyline, and they gave Kristen that depth. I ate it all up as best as I could and got to emotionally go through it as honestly as I would think Kristen DiMera would go through it — with strength, but also sadness and passion and frustration — and I got to work with a lot of really amazing actors on that journey, which is also really good.”
One of the actors who shared that emotional storyline was Alice Halsey, who is currently starring as Laura Ingalls on the Netflix series Little House on the Prairie and got a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Emerging Talent in a Daytime Drama Series. “I’m super excited,” Haiduk enthuses. “That little girl is amazing, so I had no doubt in my mind that she would be nominated. I knew she would.”
As for her own nomination, Haiduk admits the announcement wasn’t even on her radar. “I was working out; I had no idea the nominations were going to come out,” she relays. “So, the phone kept ringing and I’m like, ‘Ugh, spam calls,’ so I never picked up. And then I finally got in the car and was like, ‘Who the heck is calling me?’ And then I got a text from Andrea [McKinnon, the show’s publicist] and I was like, ‘What? What?!’ I couldn’t believe it. From that point on, I just got bombarded with congratulations. Every one of my costars texted and congratulated me, and it was really nice.”
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Being a Lead Actress nominee comes with one tradition Haiduk has never experienced before: the annual “leading ladies’ lunch,” a tradition among the nominees, hosted by the previous year’s winner, in this case, Nancy Lee Grahn (Alexis Davis, General Hospital). “I’m like, ‘Don’t let me miss it!’” Haiduk jokes. “The fun part about this is getting to do these things. We didn’t do that with Supporting Actress, but what’s so cool about it is getting to meet everybody who’s a part of that category, and I’m super excited.”
Beyond the luncheon, Haiduk is already looking ahead to Emmy night on October 30 — and the chance to celebrate in style. “It’s like going to a really fabulous party with a bunch of people that you know, and you love,” she notes. “And I love getting dressed up. Most of the time, we’re all in jeans and sweats, unless we’re acting, and then you get to wear some fancy little clothes or, as Kristen DiMera, a lot of tight dresses. But my favorite part of the whole thing is going out and looking for a vintage dress that I can wear. I am always on the lookout because I love discovering something that works for me in the vintage department. So, I’m already thinking about it.”
The recognition is especially meaningful considering how long Haiduk has been part of the soap scene. She first entered the daytime community as Hannah Nichols on All My Children in 2007.
“It’s wild for me to think that I’ve been doing this for that long,” she marvels. “You don’t really have any expectation of how your life is going to go. You have an idea what you think you want and then other things come along. The soap opera world is pretty amazing, and I just feel grateful to be part of it. It’s the one place where, yes, it’s difficult because of all the dialogue that you have to remember, but it’s so exciting, that anticipation of what’s going to happen next in the scene and what you’re going to get from the writers and your storyline. It always keeps you on your toes, but it’s really a lot of fun.”
And after nearly 20 years in daytime, it’s the layers of characters like Patty and Kristen that continue to inspire her. “They’re complex, but I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Haiduk reflects. “They’ve got a lot of darkness to them, but they’ve also got a lot of love inside and are passionate, colorful and complex. I feel so blessed with these characters I get to play.”
Days of our Lives, Weekdays, Peacock
The Young and the Restless, Weekdays, CBS, Check Local Listings