After more than 40 years of playing Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless, Eric Braeden is just as dedicated to his career as a soap opera star than ever. The actor is the first guest on CBS’s new podcast Soapy and spoke to hosts Rebecca Budig and Greg Rikaart about feeling judged for being a soap star in the past.
The conversation began with Rikaart noting, “We’ve talked about the specificity of what we do and I love when I hear actors who have worked in daytime and then, even if they go onto bigger careers in primetime or film, they revere their time in daytime. I don’t love people saying it’s a training ground because I think of it as a professional job.”
Braeden replied, “You better be prepared!” and prompted Rikaart to ask, “Do you ever feel like people are looking down upon the work that we do?”
Without hesitating, Braeden said, “Oh, they all do. In this business … I remember colleagues I used to work with, obviously in nighttime, film, and when you meet you say, ‘So, what’s up with you?’ ‘I’m doing a soap.’ ‘What? Oh. Huh.’ [Those people are] all dead, or they’re all gone, or they haven’t worked in years. I’m still at it, 45 years afterward. I love it. It’s a stupid prejudice based on absolute ignorance.”
Braeden’s career has expanded outside of the soap opera world, but The Young and the Restless has been a constant. After losing his home in the Pacific Palisades fire earlier this year, working on the drama has been a welcome distraction for the 84-year-old.
“You need to focus, otherwise you can’t do the scenes, so it gives you a little relief from the constant concerns and worries,” he told TV Insider.
The longtime actor also revealed why he’s stuck around on Y&R for so long, adding, “I love the show and I love playing the character. He is self-made. He is suspicious. He’s tough. He’s hard. But he’s also vulnerable and he wants family more than anything because he didn’t have it growing up in an orphanage. It’s difficult for Victor to trust. And this is all inherent in the groundwork that [Y&R’s co-creator and former head writer] Bill Bell laid.”
He also said, “It’s the realization when I drive to work that I have a job. We entertain millions of people all over the world and that gives you a certain feeling of responsibility to do it as well as you can, and it gives you some joy as well. We have some damn good actors on the show. It’s love working with Joshua Morrow [Nick Newman], Mark Grossman [Adam Newman], Amelia Heinle [Victoria Newman], Melissa Ordway [Abby Newman], who, unfortunately, I’ve not seen much lately, Melody [Thomas Scott, Nikki Newman], obviously, Peter Bergman [Jack Abbott], Christian LeBlanc [Michael Baldwin], and Christel Khalil [Lily Winters]. They’re all wonderful.”
The Young and the Restless, Weekdays, CBS, Check Local Listings