Teenage Tate Black has had quite a 2024 on Days of our Lives so far: he's been jailed for a crime he didn't commit, and now he is also about to look a lot different, as Leo Howard takes over for the exiting Jamie Martin Mann.
Mann, who began playing Tate last October, has decided to leave the show to attend college full-time. Howard will make his DAYS debut on Monday, April 5, just after Holly Jonas finally confessed that the drugs she ODed with on New Year's Eve didn't belong to Tate -- they belonged to her.
Howard told TV Insider that he grew up with his mother and grandmother watching both DAYS and General Hospital, so he remembers many of the characters he saw on-screen. He also has some insight into the young man he's bringing to life.
"Tate is in a very defining point in his life; he's not quite an adult but he's not a kid," Howard said. "He has had kind of a tumultuous childhood in life with both of his parents and in and out of rehab and a lot of money around, which sometimes doesn't cause people to do the best things. He's had a kind of a rough go of it. He's 17, and it's not where you want to be at 17, all the while trying to explore being in love for the first time with Holly. So it's fun for me to get to explore that because it's been a little while since I've been that age."
How will Tate and Holly's romance progress now that she's told the truth and seemingly thrown her own self under the bus to free Tate from a halfway house? Will he have hard feelings or totally forgive her?
UPDATE (April 2, 2024): Jamie Martin Mann discussed at greater length why he really left Days of our Lives
What do you think? Will you miss Jamie Martin Mann as Tate? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.
