Billy Flynn exits ‘Days of our Lives’ to join ‘Young and the Restless’

Billy Flynn is saying farewell to Salem and hello to Genoa City. 

After a decade spent playing Chad DiMera on Days of Our Lives, the actor has announced that he is exiting the beloved daytime soap for a new, undisclosed role on The Young and the Restless. 

Flynn will make his debut on Y&R later this spring, a representative for the show confirmed to Entertainment Weekly.

“I love acting, and I love stories, and I never imagined I would just tell one story for the rest of my life,” Flynn told Variety in a new interview. “The fact that I’ve been here 10 years and it’s gone by in the blink of an eye is amazing to me.”

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However, he is ready for a change. “I think with this character [DiMera], I’ve done everything I can with it,” Flynn said. “I’m looking forward to doing something new. I’m about to start a new journey and tell another story. It really is just that simple.”

Still, he noted that it feels “bittersweet” to be parting ways with the long-running NBC sudser. “Since I took the job, I’ve gotten married, I’ve had two kids, I’ve bought a house. I mean, it’s changed my life,” he said. “The people that I work with here are close friends — I’ve experienced all sorts of ups and downs since I’ve started this job, and they’ve experienced them with me.”

Flynn joined the cast of Days of Our Lives in 2014, replacing Casey Deidrick, who played Chad from 2009 until 2013. Over the past decade, his character has stepped out of the shadow of his mobster father, Stefano DiMera, to become his own stand-up man, marrying Abigail Deveraux (Marci Miller) and raising two children with her.

While information about his Young and the Restless character remains under wraps, Flynn explained that his job will get “a little harder” because he’ll be starring on the sudsers simultaneously for a bit due to Days’ filming schedule.

“In a perfect world, that wouldn’t be the case,” he said, if only because “you want people to suspend disbelief” when watching both shows.  

Flynn added that he has full “trust” in The Young and the Restless executive producer and head writer Josh Griffith — who previously worked on Days — to take good care of him in terms of the material he gets on the CBS soap.

“I’ll just be along for the ride,” he said. “And luckily there’s so many talented people there that I’ll just be riding their coattails the same way I rode everyone’s coattails here.”