Meet Rachel Boyd, Days of our Lives' brand-new Sophia

Days of our Lives' Sophia Choi has a new face as she deals with an age-old problem: a teenage pregnancy she never planned for. Rachel Boyd made her Salem debut on February 12th after Madeline Kientz left Sophia behind.

Days of our Lives changes Rachel Boyd's life

When DAYS was first casting Sophia last year, Boyd auditioned for the role, but the soap ultimately decided to go with Kientz. Boyd returned to her life as a restaurant server in a small Canadian town when she got the call that brought her to the United States and Los Angeles. At the time, she barely remembered being up for a daytime role.

"I was working my serving job there and had completely forgotten about this audition that I did, when my manager and agent called me," she told Soap Opera Digest in an interview. "And I never get calls from them together. I hid under the POS [point of sale] stand where we put the orders in to answer their call, and they said, 'Do you remember auditioning for Days of Our Lives?' I was like, 'Of course I remember!' They said, 'Well, you just got a great opportunity. You’re going to be moving to Los Angeles to film Days of Our Lives.' I was really excited. A few weeks later I had moved and was working on the show."

Rachel Boyd welcomes a challenge

When Boyd learned more about the part, she discovered that Sophia's life had changed considerably since her first audition scene, where Holly (Ashley Puzemis) and Sophia gossiped about Tate (Leo Howard). Sophia is now a high school senior pregnant with Tate's child, but he is still in love with Holly.

"I was a little bit scared," Boyd said of playing this story. "Pregnancy is not something that I’ve experienced myself, let alone something like a teen pregnancy, which is very different. I wanted to do justice to an experience that so many women have without knowing it myself. I also felt an excitement and honor to be able to play that at a young age."

For now, Boyd is ready to make Sophia her own after making sure to watch just enough of Kientz's take on the character to start the job.

"I did watch her episodes while I was first transitioning into filming the role, but I didn’t want to watch too much," she admitted. "I wanted to make sure that Sophia was still going to be something personal to me, but I also wanted to see where she was coming from and her perspective of her character. Together, we’ve both made Sophia a very well-rounded person, and I think it’s really cool that we both got to contribute to that."

Catch all-new episodes of Days of our Lives weekdays on Peacock.