Eric Braeden opened up about why he almost gave up his role as Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless
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The actor has played Victor since 1980
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Braeden said that after about a year as Victor, The Young and the Restless creator William J. Bell made a change that shifted how he approached the role forever
Eric Braeden has starred as Victor Newman onThe Young and the Restlesssince 1980, but he almost quit before he really got to dig into the character.
Braeden, 85, appeared on the May 4 episode ofStill Here Hollywoodwith Steve Kmetko and talked about his journey as Victor. The character first joinedY&Rin 1980 and was originally meant to be killed off and never heard from again. ButWilliam J. Bell, who createdThe Young and the Restlesswith his wifeLee Phillip Bell, decided to sign him to a contract.
But Braeden soon had other ideas. “They had gotten to a point where I wanted to leave the show after about a year,” he said. “I couldn't stand the medium, to be frank with you. It is daunting.”
Braeden said there's“nothing harder in this business”for an actor or a writer than working daytime shows. He said of soap operas, “It's the hardest medium there is. I've done them all. It is relentless, ruthless.”
Every scene, he said, calls for the actors to learn their lines and interpret them as best they can. Braeden said he often does 15, 20 or 25 pages of script in a day, noting, “The most I've done was 62 in one day.”
“So it doesn't leave much room for ‘How do you think I should play this?' ” he said. “...It gives you no time. You just constantly cram.”
But Braeden said he finally “decided to stay on the show” when Bell, who died in 2005 at 78, “humanized” Victor.
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“I said, ‘Bill, I can't do this anymore. I've played bad guys for too many years. Too dehumanizing. It's boring,' ” Braeden remembered. He joked that you could look at his IMDB and see that he had played villains on shows likeGunsmoke,The Six Million Dollar ManandWonder Woman, among others. “I was bored with that s---,” he said of playing bad guys.
Bell finally found “a background to this character that explains who he is.” Braeden said he filmed a scene withMelody Thomas Scott(who plays Nikki, now Victor's wife) where he opened up about his background.
“I was a mysterious person, very wealthy, but she didn't know anything about my background. I was always very cagey about it,” he said. “And one Christmas Eve, I told her where I came from: an orphanage.” Victor had been left there at age 7 by a destitute mother who left his “brutalizing” father.
“And once I did that scene, I said, ‘No, I'm staying,' because it opened up huge possibilities that you could go in psychologically,” Braeden said. He said in particular, it explained Victor's “devotion to family” and why he would “fight anyone to maintain” it.
“He fights anyone who threatens his empire,” he said of his character. He credited Bell with helping make Victor a “mainstay for 46 years” who's “never ceased to be interesting.”
And now, he's so used to the grueling pace of daytime —andThe Young and the Restless —that, he said, “If I do nighttime now,I don't like it. Takes too long.”
Braeden has been nominated for eight Daytime Emmys for his work onThe Young & the Restless, winning the award for lead actor in a drama series in 1998. In 2007, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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