Dick Van Dyke Joining ‘Days of Our Lives’

The word “retirement” is not in Dick Van Dyke’s vocabulary. The 97-year-old living legend has just booked a guest appearance on Days of Our Lives. His appearance on the long-running soap opera comes after a run-in with cast member Drake Hogestyn.

Van Dyke will play a man with amnesia, reports Deadline. He will share a scene with Hogestyn, who plays John Black, and Deidre Hall, who plays Marlena Evans. “I have played old men before, but comedy old men. First time I ever just played my 97-year-old self,” Van Dyke told Access Hollywood of filming the scene.

Van Dyke and Hogestyn go to the same gym together. “I used to kid him, ‘Say, don’t you ever have any parts for old people? Come on, give me a part!’ And he took me seriously. He got me apart,” Van Dyke said.

Although Van Dyke is not a big Days of Our Lives fan, he said he watched a recent episode to prepare. “That’s about all the homework I could do was watch one and see how they did it,” he said. Van Dyke also called up his friend Carol Burnett, who had a stint on All My Children in the 1980s, to get some advice on appearing in a soap. “Make sure you know all your lines because they don’t do retakes,” she told him.

Van Dyke’s latest professional gig comes a few weeks after he appeared in The Masked Singer season premiere. It also comes after he was in a car accident in Malibu last month. The Mary Poppins star crashed his 2018 Lexus LS 500 in Malibu while driving on slick roads on March 15. “The airbag did not deploy, so I just did a face-plant right in the steering wheel, and I have two stitches here,” Van Dyke told a paparazzo a few days later as he pointed to his chin. “Other than that, it just made me a little dumber I guess.”

Days of Our Lives aired on NBC for more than 57 years before it moved to Peacock in September 2022. The show was renewed for a historic 60th season in March. The show has continued to remain popular even after becoming exclusive to streaming, with NBC even commissioning the spinoff Days of Our Lives: Beyond Salem. Days is one of the longest-running scripted programs in the world.

When Van Dyke agreed to do The Masked Singer, he didn’t know much about that show either. “I had never even seen the show when they asked me. So I checked it out and it looked like a lot of fun,” he told PEOPLE in February. “I was positive they wouldn’t be able to guess who I was. And I was right!” Van Dyke was dressed as the Gnome and said he was “flattered” that one of the panelists guessed he might have been Tony Bennett.