Kassie DePaiva on catfights, reunions, and all about Eve

Days of our Lives' Kassie DePaiva opens up about playing one of the most love-to-hate characters in daytime.

Whether you love her or hate her, it's pretty tough not to want to slap Days of our Lives' Eve. From trying to get her hands on money headed for charity to sleeping with her daughter's boyfriend, she's proven that she's one of the best bitches in daytime. And lucky for viewers, her portrayer, Kassie DePaiva, tells Soap Central that things are going to get a whole lot better -- or worse, depending on how one looks at it.

When DAYS writes a character, they write it to the hilt. So when a newly returned Eve was revealed to be just as catty as she was back in the 80s and 90s, fans knew it was only a matter of time before things got really out of control. And though at the moment it looks like there's no possible way that Eve could outdo herself and the trouble she's caused in the past six months, DePaiva teases that fans haven't seen anything yet. "Nobody likes her," the actress points out with a laugh. "Nobody likes Eve. She's gone down the worst road possible, and I think that she'll continue down that road, because she's already there."

Meaning that yes, for those wondering, there is a definite possibility that Eve will find herself back in bed with J.J. -- the son of her longtime enemy, Jennifer (Melissa Reeves) and the boyfriend of her daughter, Paige (True O'Brien). "As a woman playing a part as broken as Eve, I think about why she would sleep with J.J. -- besides all of the obvious: he's cute, he's young, whatever," DePaiva muses. "And what's most interesting, I think, and what I've chosen to play, is that he's the one thing that is like a touchstone for her. She feels something [with him]. She's looking for love in all the wrong places, obviously. But with this, she felt that physical connection which she equates to passion and feeling alive, to a certain extent."

And, as the actress points out, it's possible that J.J. reminds Eve of his father, Jack (Matthew Ashford) -- to whom she was once married. "I think she assimilates her relationship to J.J. to a certain point as him being Jack in the flesh," she says. "Eve understood Jack and his bad-boyness, and she sees that in J.J. [Plus], she and J.J. are very much alike. They're both very impulsive, they're both passionate about music, they both love Paige, and they both felt betrayed and devastated the day that they got together. So it was a mutual pity party that ended up being a bad choice roll in the hay."

Having worked so closely with Moss for the past couple of months, DePaiva has gotten to know him on quite a deep level. And though there is an age difference between the two, it's not something that's often crossing her mind. "Casey is an unbelievably intuitive, talented young man that has the world by the tail right now," she raves of her costar. "I don't feel like I'm working with a child; I feel like I'm working with a co-actor. Although the story, for me, I know what I'm cast as. I'm cast as an older woman with the young boy, like The Graduate. That's what I know that I'm playing... and it's no big deal. It's very, very specific, and I didn't know that's what it was going to be, but now that I do know, you just kind of go, 'Okay, those are the parameters,' and you make it work. And I've enjoyed finding the colors of the relationship and playing the arc of the story with Casey, and I think there's a lot of great story that's going to fall into place because of that one bad night."

In fact, DePaiva reveals that though it was just one night -- for now, anyway -- the fun between Eve and J.J. really is just getting started. "This is not a one-note pony," she teases. "I thought it was going to be, but no. It will be a really wonderful story that will build over time, and I think that the viewers will enjoy the ride. I mean, it'll be bumpy! But it's worth it. It's like, 'Oh no -- is it going to happen? Is it going to happen again? I don't know!' You'll see. It's good stuff. Good soap opera."

Speaking of juicy drama, fans have been speculating that when (or rather if) Eve washes her hands of J.J., Daniel (Shawn Christian) might be next on her radar -- especially since the writers formally introduced Eve to Nicole (Arianne Zucker) this month. But DePaiva isn't so sure that an Eve/Daniel pairing is in the cards. "You can speculate all you want, but I can tell you this much: women and men won't touch Eve with a ten-foot pole," the actress jokes. "She's just not very well liked in town. She has a reputation, and for whatever reason, people in Salem don't forget people's pasts. Eve was a bad girl back then, and she's certainly Hurricane Eve now. She kind of destroys everything in her way."

That being said, everyone knows that Daniel loves a bad girl -- and he's particularly attracted to women he feels he can doctor up. "A staple gun is not going to fix Eve, so we'll see," the actress teases. "But I would love that. We've got so many talented actors in my pseudo age range that would be fun to play off of, even if it's not romantically. But you know, I certainly enjoy Shawn Christian a great deal, and a triangle with Nicole would be great fun."

Meanwhile, another story she'd love to delve into would be the reveal of Paige's father. "That would be pretty key, because she's obviously devastated and loved this man very much," she explains. "He walked out on her -- or that's the story, that she was devastated. But she probably did something that ran him off. Knowing my character, she's probably in denial about something and that's what really happened, she did something bad. But she doesn't remember that. She has selective memory. But that would be interesting to me."

One person that DePaiva doesn't think will pop up in Eve's life, however, is her father, Shane (Charles Shaughnessy). "I think [Charles is] only four years older than me in real life, so I don't know that they'll put our faces together, because we might look like brother and sister rather than father and daughter," she speculates with a laugh. "But who knows. I would love it. I think the more family that characters have, the more the richness of history. It just makes the character more interesting. So the more family, the better."

Of course, DePaiva can't say family without many of her fans thinking of her One Life to Live family. And it's something the DAYS writers thought of, too -- when Melissa Archer (ex-Natalie Buchanan) made her debut as Serena. "We had a little blip where she said something like, 'Yeah, you remind me of someone I used to know in another life, and she was a bitch, too,'" the actress recalls of the throwback reference to her former character, Blair. "You can't miss that opportunity, you know?"

Whether or not Eve and Serena's paths will cross often remains to be seen, but if the two eventually end up in each other's orbit, then DePaiva is sure her alter ego will dish out the diva -- because she just can't help herself. "If I get an opportunity to have fun and laugh in a scene, I really enjoy that, because most of the time, she's railing on somebody," the actress says, adding that though she loves playing the character, portraying Eve can be quite tiring. "You know when you go through a day and you might be PMSing and you're in a bad mood, you know how exhausting it is just to remain in a bad mood all day long? That's kind of what Eve is," she explains. "But it's a job, and somebody has got to do it, and they obviously think I can be a bitch, and they're paying me to do it, so I can do it!"

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"Though, with a character like Eve, I don't know what the longevity is, and I don't know how long they had planned on writing me," she continues. "I signed a contract, and I'm there as long as they want me, and our writers were just nominated for a [Writer Guild of America] award, so we've got great writers on Days of our Lives. They are writing me to the hilt, and I could not be happier."

What is your take on Eve -- do you love to hate her or hate to love her? What would you like to see happen with Eve's storyline? Let us know in the Comments area below, or you can also click here to submit feedback.

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