Jack Deveraux is a fictional character from Days of Our Lives, an American soap opera on the NBC network, most famously played by Matthew Ashford since 1987. He is a member of the Johnson family and first appeared in 1987. Ashford is the third actor to play in the role, and appeared regularly from 1987 through 1993 and from 2001 to 2006, with a few minor breaks in between, in addition to a small guest stint in 2007. In September 2011, after a four-year absence, the character returned to reconnect with his estranged family. His return was short-lived when it was announced that Ashford had been let go, last appearing on August 15, 2012, when the character was killed off in an elevator shaft. From 2016 to 2017, Ashford reprised the role for several guest-appearances; he returned full-time on December 28, 2018. The character has also been portrayed for lesser stints by Mark Valley, Steve Wilder, and Jon Lindstrom.
Many of his storylines have included his relationship with Jennifer Horton, which has made up one of the soap's most popular supercouples. They have two children together, Abigail Deveraux and JJ Deveraux, in addition to a grandson, Thomas DiMera and a granddaughter Charlotte DiMera, through Abigail. He recently discovered to have another daughter, Gwen Rizczech. One of the character's well known plots have been his fake deaths which occurred between 2003 and 2012, where he was presumed dead four times.
Casting
At the character's inception in 1987, the role was played by Joseph Adams from April 10 to July 17, by James Acheson from July 21 to October 26, and by Matthew Ashford from October 30 onward. Ashford went on to play the role through October 29, 1993, reappearing from February 5, 2001, to October 27, 2003, and June 22, 2004, until September 21, 2006, with a guest appearance on April 2–4, 2007, and again from September 23, 2011, until August 15, 2012. Ashford later took a brief absence from the series from October 2003 to June 2004 where he would appear as a special guest star on One Life to Live.
Ashford was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in 2012. During Ashford's absence, the role of Jack was played by Mark Valley from October 28, 1994, until September 26, 1997, and by Steve Wilder from September 26, 1997, through June 5, 1998.
On November 30, 2015, it was announced that Ashford would briefly return to the soap; he appeared on May 24, 2016. Ashford also briefly appeared on June 20, 2016, August 5, 2016, and August 23, 2016. He made another on-off appearance on December 21, 2017. Ashford returned full-time at the conclusion of the December 28, 2018, episode.
On December 30, 2020, Jon Lindstrom stepped in as Ashford's body double for scenes with Cady McClain's Jennifer. At the time, Lindstrom was married to McClain in real life.
Characterization Jack Deveraux, one half of Jack and Jennifer, is an anti-hero who can be both charming and manipulative. He entered the story as a villain who wedged himself between another supercouple, Steve Johnson and Kayla Brady. Jack later became a core main character in the Days mythos through his passion, sense of humor, redemption, and love for heroine Jennifer Horton.
The character has been a frequent winner of Soap Opera Digest Awards including Outstanding Villain, Outstanding Comic Performance, and multiple wins with Jennifer: Best Love Story, Outstanding Supercouple, and Best Wedding. Ashford was also nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in 2012.
Storylines
1987-1988 When Jack came to Salem, he was hoping to reconnect with Kayla Brady, the woman he'd met a couple of years prior in Hawaii and couldn't get out of his mind. He had Hodgkin's disease, but he was in denial about its severity, and actually tried to hide the symptoms plaguing him. However, that couldn't last long. Once he was hospitalized because he was no longer in remission, his father, wealthy Senator Harper Deveraux, hired Kayla to be Jack's nurse. Jack let Kayla know he loved her, and he told her that her love gave him the will to live. Thus, when Steve "Patch" Johnson rejected Kayla, he pushed her towards Jack (his birth brother Billy, unbeknownst to Jack), and she agreed to marry him. Sure enough, Jack went into remission and recuperated fully.
Jack and Kayla's marriage was doomed from the start. Almost immediately, Harper began poisoning Kayla because he mistakenly thought she knew Jack was adopted. Steve discovered Kayla was ill, and he kidnapped her to get her out of danger. As he nursed her back to health, they resumed their relationship. Kayla wanted to divorce Jack right away. However, Steve convinced Kayla that since Jack was running for assemblyman, she should wait until after his election to break the news. Kayla therefore reluctantly returned to Jack and played the loving wife even as she avoided his bed. Before her kidnapping, their marriage had remained unconsummated due to first his illness, then hers. Now that she was back, Kayla meant to keep their marriage chaste until the divorce. Unaware of her plans, Jack accepted her nightly excuses that she was not yet ready to have sex, believing she just needed time. Meanwhile, Kayla was seeing Steve secretly at every opportunity.
On the night of Jack's election to assemblyman, a reporter handed Jack compromising photos of Steve and Kayla, hoping to blackmail him; finally, Jack realized Kayla was having an affair. He returned to the loft and raped her. A confrontation between Jack and Steve on the roof of Kayla's loft resulted in Jack falling multiple stories, and Jack's near-fatal injuries resulted in him needing a new kidney. Unfortunately, the best viable donor was his brother Steve. His mother Jo asked him to donate in order to save "Billy's" life, but Steve was conflicted; he finally came to the decision to donate after visiting Jack in the hospital and remembering the promise he'd made as a child to protect his little brother. After Jack recovered, Kayla pressed charges, but in the end, Jack pled guilty to the lesser charge of assault. She then filed for divorce.
Jack had been turning to Melissa Horton; she'd always had a crush on him, and Jack had no idea that Harper had tried to frame her for poisoning Kayla. He found out from Melissa, to his shock and horror, that he was adopted. He was furious at Harper, whom he temporarily turned his back on; after all those years talking about the importance of "Deveraux blood," Harper had actually been sterile. To add insult to injury, he discovered that his birth family was the Johnsons: Jo, whom he'd known as the kindly maid; Adrienne; and Steve, Jack's greatest enemy (in his mind). He initially rejected his birth identity as "William Earl Johnson" whole-heartedly, and told Jo and the Johnsons he wanted nothing to do with his birth family. It was a long, slow, painful process for him to accept his "new" family, but he eventually did.
After Harper was arrested for being the serial killer known as The Riverfront Knifer, Jack ran for Harper's now-vacant senate seat against Mickey Horton. Jack's romance with Mickey's daughter Melissa had progressed physically, but he didn't really love her as more than a friend. Still, he proposed to her because marrying her would be politically useful. After discovering his motives, Melissa left him at the altar in spectacular fashion the day before the election.
With only a few people left willing to give Jack the time of day (essentially Jo, Adrienne, and his stepmother Anjelica), Jack reconciled with Harper. Harper manipulated Jack into helping him break out of prison by pretending he was being beaten by fellow inmates. Jack enlisted Victor Kiriakis' help; he had no idea how to pull off an operation like that. Kiriakis hired some goons who turned out to be less than effective. The plan went bad when Harper was shot, and his goons kidnapped Kayla to tend to a wounded Harper while they attempted to get him out of the country. Steve saved her, and Jack's father went back to jail.
1989-1991
Adrift and depressed, Jack bought 51% of the newspaper The Spectator in order to stop them from running a humiliating expose about his failed campaign against Mickey Horton. While initially the purchase was a move borne out of desperation, he threw himself into running it, much to the chagrin of his partner and the original owner Diana Colville. She was constantly pushing back. He eventually attempted to blackmail her into selling him her 49% of the paper, but she entrusted it to editor Vern Scofield instead. In time, Jack earned ownership of the paper honestly.
It was at The Spectator that Jack met college journalism student Jennifer Horton. She soon became his protege, but her compassionate perspective would often temper his cynicism when they were working together. She was one of the only people who believed that he wanted to change and who was willing to not only give him a chance, but to help him. The more they were together, the more their connection intensified. Jennifer decided to aggressively pursue a relationship with him. Although Jack had fallen deeply in love with her, he resisted her advances, viewing himself as unworthy.
Jennifer’s ex-boyfriend Emilio Ramirez returned to town, determined to win her back. Emilio was aided by Melissa Horton, who returned shortly after he did. She still loathed Jack and didn't believe he had changed his ways, so she did her best to push Jennifer towards Emilio. Instead of fighting for Jennifer, Jack denied his feelings and pushed her away, convinced he would be toxic for her.
Still, even as Jack claimed he was not interested in Jennifer, his actions spoke for him; he couldn’t stop himself from interfering in her relationship with Emilio or from responding to her. He even went so far as to kidnap Jennifer on her wedding day to Emilio. He took her to a cabin outside of town in a fire engine; there, she expected him to declare his love. Instead, he told her he'd simply brought her out there so she could rethink her decision. Jennifer was infuriated, but Jack wasn't ready to be honest about his feelings yet.
Another major plotline involved the Toscanos. Steve’s ex-wife Marina Toscano was driving a wedge between Steve and Kayla by blackmailing Steve into helping her find the key to her family’s “treasure.” Jack was desperate to help Steve and Kayla in any way he could because now that he was interested in changing, he knew that he had to do something to make amends for his biggest sin: raping Kayla. He discovered that Marina had a sister named Isabella stashed in Bayview Sanitarium who was actually quite sane, and he broke her out. After finding the key to the treasure with Jennifer and helping rescue Kayla, he quietly figured out the treasure's location alone and discovered that the "treasure" was the diary of Isabella's mother. Its immense value came from the fact that it contained the secret to Isabella's paternity: her father was not Ernesto Toscano, whom she believed to be dead, but Victor Kiriakis, a man she was raised to hate. Before giving Isabella the diary, Jack removed the pages detailing the secret.
Meanwhile, the actually very much alive Ernesto Toscano was planning a "cruise of deception" to get revenge on his enemies in secret. He wanted the incriminating pages of that diary badly, and he discovered they were in Jack's possession. He invited both Jack and Jennifer on the cruise. Still, Jack refused to reveal the secret, remembering how traumatic it had been when he'd been told Harper wasn't his father. Ernesto revealed himself to Isabella on the cruise, kidnapped her, and blew up the ship with Jack, Jennifer, and several other Salemites on board. The shipwrecked passengers found their way to an island, where Jack and Jennifer had sex for the first time.