Not Young, Still Restless (14 page)

M
y daughter and I are both in perfect health today. I hope with all my heart that you are too. But in case you’re not, please don’t lose sight of the power you have—to surround yourself with faith, love, positive thoughts, and the most gifted experts at your disposal, and to starve your fear and your illness out of existence by surrounding it with a small, impenetrable psychic circle that prevents it from ever, ever becoming a part of who you are.

O
h, and to resist the temptation to dwell on it, which explains the deliberate brevity of this chapter.

Chapter Eight

Costars and Other Playmates

A
nd now, the chapter some of my castmates have been dreading (and most of them will turn to first) since I announced I was writing my memoirs. Where they get the idea that I might shoot my mouth off and be brutally honest I can’t imagine—it’s typically all anyone can do to drag an opinion out of me, but I’m going to give this my best shot if it kills me. (Please tell me none of you read this paragraph with a straight face.)

But first, I feel compelled to clear up a story about me that’s been repeated in the press and all over the Internet for some time now. Apparently it’s been widely publicized that I’ve developed a reputation on the
Y&R
set, particularly among such younger male members of the cast as Greg Rikaart, Josh Morrow, Billy Miller, and Michael Graziadei, that I’m a serial pincher. That no butt or groin area is safe during a scene with me. That I lurk in all my Katherine Chancellor splendor and dignity, waiting for exactly the right, least-expected moment and then strike, on-camera, daring my victim not to react with, let’s say, an involuntary grin or snicker.

It’s time to set the record straight once and for all about this insidious pinching rumor: every word of it is absolutely true.

Frankly, it amuses the hell out of me to sneak in a playful pinch, as my way of saying, “I don’t care how dark or lighthearted this scene is, let’s not forget to enjoy it.” I’m also very selective about who gets pinched. If I’m not enormously fond of someone, as I am of the boys I mentioned (and at my age, “boys” refers to anyone under sixty), you couldn’t pay me to pinch him. It’s a gesture strictly reserved for my favorites on the set and those to whom I’m close enough to know they’ll take it in the spirit of fun and fondness in which it’s intended.

To his eternal credit, Josh Morrow goes out of his way to move close to me during our all-too-rare scenes together, daring me to get in one good surprise pinch, so I make it a point to let time pass between assaults, to lull him into a sense of false security. Billy Miller and Michael Graziadei are so loose on-camera that their reactions invariably fit right into whatever’s going on around them. Greg Rikaart, on the other hand, if I plan it properly, has to struggle to keep a straight face, which I guess makes him the most ideal target.

Greg had grown accustomed to my occasional pinches on his butt, so I’m sure he felt safe from me when he was seated in the backyard of the Chancellor estate with his butt protected by a chair during the wedding of Katherine and Murphy. But what can I say? I can’t resist a challenge. So as I walked up the aisle, with cameras rolling, I unexpectedly paused to say hello to Greg (Kevin), ran my hand down his tie while complimenting him on it, and got in a good quick pinch to his groin before heading on up the aisle to my waiting groom.

I’m told there are fans who make a game of seeing if they can catch Katherine pinching someone in the course of a scene. If this is the first you’re hearing of this, please, by all means, feel free to start watching for it too. Not only am I not giving up the game anytime soon, but I’m just getting started.

And for those of you who are wondering, by the way, yes, I did, on one occasion, branch out from the young ones. It was during an especially tedious scene in which I was frankly bored and knew he was too, and suddenly it became impossible to resist giving one sound, meaningful pinch to one of my oldest friends in the cast, the inimitable . . .

Eric Braeden

If you know
The Young and the Restless
, you know that one of the strongest, most enduring friendships in Genoa City is the friendship between Katherine Chancellor and Victor Newman, brilliantly portrayed by Eric Braeden since 1980. Katherine met Victor through her close friend Nikki Newman, who is the great star-crossed love of his life. He was a self-made man who rose from his childhood in an orphanage to become a successful businessman. Katherine was impressed enough to make him the new head of Chancellor Industries, essentially telling him, “Make as much money as you want, just be sure I make every bit as much as you do.” They don’t just know each other; they understand each other very, very well, more alike in their strong-willed determination to succeed and in their private vulnerabilities than they might care to admit. They deeply love each other, flaws and all. They’re loyal to each other, they pull no punches when it comes to the honesty between them, they unconditionally have each other’s back, and no matter how exasperated they might get with each other from time to time, the foundation of their friendship is strong enough that they can disagree without judgment and move on when the argument’s over.

Which, come to think of it, except for the part about being billionaires, is a pretty good description of the friendship between Eric and me. If only Victor Newman had Eric Braeden’s sense of humor.

I know. The word “hilarious” doesn’t exactly leap to mind when you think of Eric. But there’s a well-disguised playful streak in him that can make working with him feel like an exercise in the arts of improvisation and self-control.

Eric doesn’t look at a script until the day he’s shooting it, and if there’s dialogue he finds inane or out of character for Victor Newman, he changes it or cuts it completely. He’s good at it too. He’s as protective of Victor, his character, and his relationships in Genoa City as I am of Katherine. But playing a scene with someone who’s changed or cut his lines with no warning often means your dialogue makes no sense at all, which, especially in these days of “shoot it and move on no matter what,” leaves you no choice but to pay attention, think on your feet, and start improvising, trying as best as you can to keep the purpose of the scene intact. It may drive writers, directors, and other actors crazy, but he and I trust each other enough to get a kick out of it. And to be perfectly honest, it’s not unusual for our improvisation to make more sense, and be more true to our characters, than the dialogue we were given.

Close-ups in a scene with Eric are a whole other challenge. He thinks nothing of waiting until he knows the camera is focused solely on you and then, looking deeply into your eyes, letting drool come out one side of his mouth, or putting on an animated little dance with his eyebrows. In the unlikely event that I give up my hobby of Pinching by Ambush, I might even start complaining about it.

There’s also an ongoing battle between me and Eric that I’m ready and willing to expose: Eric insists on making sure that Victor Newman has the last word in any scene, whether it’s written that way or not, and it’s my position that every once in a while, his benefactress, Katherine Chancellor, deserves it just as much.

Even when my line indicates finality, something like “I’m going to put an end to it, Victor, and I’m going to do it
today
,” or “I don’t care what it takes or who tries to get in our way, we
will
get back Jabot Cosmetics,” he’ll pause long enough to give me a glimmer of hope and then, just before the director yells, “Cut!” he’ll murmur some gratuitous line, like “I’m sure you will,” or “That will be wonderful, Katherine.”

One day, as if we were playing a game of who could be the last to cross the finish line, I decided that if he was going to keep talking, so was I, so I said, “Well, I’m not sure ‘wonderful’ is quite the right word, Victor. It could get very unpleasant.” He responded, “But it will be worth it.” My turn again. “I certainly hope so.” I smelled victory. But no. “Count on it,” he said, immediately followed by the director’s “Cut!”

I didn’t move a muscle, I just kept staring at him, and the instant the cameras were off I said, “Eric, do you think it would be okay if I have the last word in a scene just once?”

He simply smiled and said, “No.”

Which, of course, made me more determined than ever.

Months later we were doing a scene in Gloworm—a name that, as you may have noticed, Katherine deliberately refuses to memorize, so that it might come out “Glow . . . Thing” or “Glow Whatever-It-Is.” Victor and Katherine were seated at a table having a very intense conversation, and at least according to the script, the scene was to end with my line: “That, my friend, remains to be seen.” Knowing that Eric considers lines like that to be the perfect opening for a classic Victor Newman response, I delivered it as written and then, before he had a chance to even take a breath, leapt up and practically sprinted out the door. He didn’t know I could move that fast.
I
didn’t know I could move that fast. But rather than deliver a comeback to an empty chair, he simply sat there in silence, and let me tell you, I was ecstatic when I heard the word “Cut!” In fact, I admit it, I gloated for the rest of the day over my one and only “win.” I know I’ll pay the price—he’ll be making it even more of a challenge from now on, but take my word for it, I’ve beaten him once, and I’ll do it again.

The bottom line is, personally and professionally, I cherish this man. I cherish the fondness and respect between us. I cherish our phone calls to check on each other when one of us is going through a health crisis of some kind. I cherish the talks we’ve had about what a bitch this aging process is, but how it sure as hell beats the alternative. I cherish our thirty-plus years of laughter and tears and personal struggles and on-screen storylines, from the exciting to the preposterous. I even cherish our occasional frustration with each other, because it’s always accompanied by the luxury of being able to work through it. I can’t in my wildest dreams imagine another Victor Newman, and I wish we had another thirty-plus years together to look forward to.

All of which can be summed up perfectly, I guess, with four simple words:

God bless Eric Braeden.

Ed and Melody Thomas Scott

From the moment Melody Thomas arrived on the set of
Y&R
in 1979 to take over the role of Nikki Newman (née Reed), I was enchanted with her. She was gorgeous, sexy, adorable, and already a skilled, experienced actress who’d been working since she was three years old. Our on-screen relationship was as unlikely as it was beautifully conceived: Katherine, the insanely wealthy businesswoman, and Nikki, the stripper, became as close as if they were mother and daughter, with the added bonus of being best friends. They shared a common battle with alcohol addiction, highly dubious track records with the men in their lives, an intense loyalty to the people they loved, and bigger, more vulnerable hearts than they could sometimes handle.

Off-screen, we were every bit as close. My God, I loved her, and my God, did we have fun, working together and playing together. She was the first person other than my own children who called me “Mother,” and I wore that badge proudly.

In 1976
The Young and the Restless
had hired a very smart, very gifted young associate producer named Ed Scott. He and I quickly developed a friendship I cherished. I admired him, I admired his talent, and when Bill Bell called me one night at two
A.M.
to tell me he was thinking about elevating Ed from associate producer to producer and to ask me what I thought, I gave him a resounding “Yes! Do it! You won’t regret it, that’s for sure.”

I couldn’t have been happier for Ed, or more proud, when, in 1978, he became a full-fledged
Y&R
producer, already in place for a year when the stunning twenty-three-year-old Melody Thomas entered the building. I was working closely with two of my dearest friends, and life was good.

I can’t say exactly when Ed and Melody started seeing each other and fell in love. I can say that somewhere along the line, as we reached the mid-1980s, things slowly began to change between the three of us, and I wasn’t quick to catch on.

When Melody had mononucleosis and wasn’t able to work, I called her one morning on a day off to suggest I come over to see her and take care of her for a few hours. There was a long, deafening silence before she finally said, “Uh, no, today wouldn’t be good.” I didn’t think a whole lot about it, but I did have an uneasy feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

Something wasn’t. For the next two years after that phone call, Melody didn’t speak a single word to me. Not so much as a simple hello. Nikki kept right on speaking to her dearest friend Katherine, of course. But the minute a rehearsal or a scene ended, Melody turned her back and walked away. There was no explanation, there was no willingness to discuss it, there was just, all of a sudden, nothing. I was shocked, I was devastated, and I had no idea what I’d done or what to do about it.

By then Ed and Melody had become a serious couple. In fact, they were married in 1985. And the air had decidedly cooled between Ed and me as well. Obviously it wasn’t a coincidence, and it hurt. It hurt even more when, as time went on, I felt like Ed Scott, whom I’d cared deeply about and cheered for and supported, was trying to wipe both me and Katherine Chancellor right off the
Y&R
canvas. No matter what you do for a living, if you’ve ever found yourself working closely with a former friend who clearly doesn’t want you there anymore, you know the cycle of emptiness and anger in the pit of your stomach that became my constant companion.

It was a tough couple of years on the set. I missed Melody. I missed the days when Katherine Chancellor was a force in Genoa City rather than an occasional part of the background. I missed looking forward to going to work. And all the while our days were getting longer and longer as Ed would repeatedly demand forty-five minute breaks to relight Melody in a scene or have her hair redone. Inevitable as it may have been, I hated it that some of my resentment toward Ed was spilling over onto Melody, but in my heart of hearts I kept hoping that someday—although I had no idea when or how—she and I would find our way back to each other.

I still don’t know what brought this on, but I know I’ll never forget it. One day, after two years of silence, Melody and I were preparing to shoot a scene together. Ed must have spent half an hour lighting and relighting Melody until he was satisfied with how his wife looked on-camera. At the same time, he was so obviously ignoring me that, I swear to you, I was left standing there in the dark. He was walking away, ready to shoot, when Melody’s eyes met mine and out of nowhere I saw a flicker of love and recognition, of my old friend reconnecting as if she’d just awakened after a bout of amnesia, followed by, “Ed, wait. What about Mother?” As suddenly as she’d gone away, she came back, and slowly but surely and a bit tentatively, what do you know, we managed to pick up where we left off.