Not Young, Still Restless (17 page)

In her best patronizing, singsongy voice, Nancy recited, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I can’t believe we’ve both been in the business for this many years without meeting. I’m a huge fan, and I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Nancy Grahn.”

Several days of arguments and protests followed that first conversation, but at the end of each one of them Nancy reluctantly agreed to go to the awards and, if she could work up the nerve, approach Bill Bell. There were countless rehearsals of her brief monologue so that, if nothing else, she could get through the encounter without getting tongue-tied, and Lindsay helpfully recited it with her: “I’m sorry to bother you, but I can’t believe we’ve both been in the business for this many years without meeting. I’m a huge fan, and I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Nancy Grahn.”

Lindsay was a nervous wreck on Nancy’s behalf on the night of the Soap Opera Digest Awards, dying to hear how it went. She didn’t have to wait long. Nancy called her at six the next morning.

“Damn it!” she began, not even bothering with hello. “What a disaster! I can’t believe I let you talk me into that!”

It was the last thing Lindsay expected to hear. “Why? What happened?”

“It started out okay,” Nancy told her. “I got there, I looked fine, I did get to say hi to a lot of people, and they all seemed supportive and happy to see me. But I kept one eye on the
Y&R
tables, and when everyone was seated I took a nice deep breath, walked up, extended my hand, and said, just like I was supposed to, ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but I can’t believe we’ve both been in the business for this many years without meeting. I’m a huge fan, and I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Nancy Grahn.’ ”

“And . . . ?”

“And he stood up, very courtly and gracious, took my hand in both of his, and said, ‘How do you do, Nancy? I’m Jerry Douglas.’ ”

Unfortunately, Lindsay was laughing too hard to be as sympathetic as she should have been, especially when Nancy added, “Two seconds later, I glanced over and saw that Bill Bell was sitting just two chairs away, and of course he’d heard the whole thing, so I couldn’t even say it again, I just told Jerry Douglas it was nice meeting him and headed straight to my car.”

N
ow, to be fair, Jerry Douglas, aka John Abbott, patriarch of the Abbott family on
The Young and the Restless
, did bear a resemblance to Bill Bell. It was a relatively understandable mistake. But I think we’ll always wonder what would have happened if Nancy had actually approached the right man that night. The happy ending is that in 1996
General Hospital
was smart enough to sign her; she was back to work where she most definitely belonged and she’s still there today.

As for my castmate Jerry Douglas, he came to
Y&R
as John Abbott in 1982, a true family man and founder of Jabot Cosmetics, the epitome of honesty and integrity and one of Katherine Chancellor’s dearest friends. It was always a common assumption, in fact, that Katherine and John were lovers when they were young, and she’s been a constant treasured presence in the lives of the Abbott children, Jack, Ashley, Traci, and Billy. It hit both Katherine and me very hard when the insane decision was made to have John die of a stroke in 2006. Bill Bell was gone by then, but I could hear his voice as clearly as if he were standing there beside me when the news hit: “You do
not
kill off your core characters, and you do
not
let your core families disintegrate!”

I couldn’t agree more. And believe me, if a vote were taken on the set today among the actors who’ve been on
Y&R
for any length of time at all, the Abbott family would be sitting down to breakfast at their long-lost dining room table again right this very minute.

The Backbone of
The Young and the Restless

When all is said and done, there’s only one real star of
Y&R
, and that’s the show itself. We members of the cast are simply there to contribute our light to that star. As I look around and look back, I marvel at the long, amazing journey of a show that’s developed a persona of its own and at some of the actors who have formed the backbone of that persona. So many of us have been through one another’s off-screen marriages and divorces and births and deaths and illnesses and crises and celebrations, and whether we’re still part of
Y&R
or have moved on, I have to at least mention a few more of those castmates who’ve left indelible impressions on the show and on my heart.

Lauralee Bell: Five years old when I first met her, now a happily married mother of two beautiful children. Fifteen years old when she joined the cast of
Y&R
as supermodel Christine “Cricket” Blair, and so gracefully tolerated the inevitable, undeserved nepotism accusations from being Bill and Lee Bell’s daughter despite working every bit as hard as the rest of us without ever, on-screen or off, feeling entitled. She’s as “normal” and grounded a woman as you’d ever meet, and comes back on
Y&R
from time to time even with a busy, well-rounded life as a producer, businesswoman, and completely devoted wife, mother, and daughter. I still say to this day what I’ve said to Bill and Lee a thousand times over the years: I’d proudly adopt her in a heartbeat.

Tricia Cast: My housemate when she flies in to work from her home in a small town near Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, singer-songwriter Bat McGrath. She started acting at the age of twelve and already had an impressive list of credentials when she joined
Y&R
in 1986 as Nina Webster and became Christine’s best friend and Jill’s daughter-in-law. She’s always been one of my favorite actresses on the show, with a well-deserved Emmy and another recent nomination to her credit, and it’s an ongoing source of amusement for us that Nina lives with Katherine when she comes to Genoa City while Tricia lives with me when she comes to Los Angeles. There are few people to whom I’m closer and of whom I’m more proud.

Tracey Bregman: An integral member of the cast as Lauren Baldwin (née Fenmore) since 1983, with a few gaps in between. I’ve known her as a single woman, a married woman, a devoted mother, and a divorcee, from huge hair to the gorgeous mane she has now, and not once, maybe because of her show business background thanks to her musician/composer father, Buddy Bregman, have I ever seen an “off” day or a less than utterly professional, right-on-the-money performance. She also manages to get more beautiful with every passing year, by the way, which I would find annoying if she weren’t such a loyal, generous friend. Now if Lauren Baldwin would just repay Katherine Chancellor the $50,000 she borrowed in the 1980s to make an album . . .

Doug Davidson: He was a major heartthrob when he joined the
Y&R
cast in 1978 as the private detective Paul Williams, and he’s still a major heartthrob of mine all these decades later. He’s as fine a husband and a father as he is an actor and a man, a perfect mixture of laughter and sensitivity. Give him any storyline, no matter how emotionally difficult, and he’ll make it soar. He’s earned three Emmy nominations, but I would personally add a Most Hilarious Off-screen Comedy Team nomination for him and his most notorious partner in crime . . .

Don Diamont: Doug Davidson and Don Diamont, our ridiculously handsome Brad Carlton from 1985 until 2009, never let a day go by without finding a way to burst into some form of much-needed silliness to loosen up their castmates. Off-screen, Don is a natural born father and caretaker, someone who’d be there for you at three in the morning if you needed him. As Brad Carlton, he started as the Abbott family gardener and ended up marrying not one but both of the Abbott sisters while becoming a shrewd, formidable businessman. It literally felt like a punch in the stomach when Don stopped me at the elevators one day in 2009 to tell me he’d just been fired from
Y&R
, killed off, mind you, after an utterly insipid storyline that painted Brad, and Don, right into a corner. He’s right across the hall now, finding all the success he deserves as Bill Spencer Jr. on
The Bold and the Beautiful
, and as much as we miss him, he’s got a loud, enthusiastic fan club cheering him on from our side of the hall. Thank you, Bradley Bell, for being smart enough and loyal enough to at least keep Don in the building where he belongs.

And speaking of the Abbott sisters . . .

Eileen Davidson and Beth Maitland: Also known as Ashley and Traci Abbott, both of whom joined
Y&R
in 1982. Two spectacular actresses and two of the finest women I’ve ever met. Eileen left us for a while to play five roles on
Days of Our Lives
and to go across the hall, thanks again to Bradley Bell, to appear on
The Bold and the Beautiful
, but thank God we’ve got her back. She’s come into her own, happily married with a precious son and a successful career as an author when she’s not at the studio. I’ve always wished our writers would capitalize on a facet of Ashley and Katherine’s relationship that’s never been explored: Ashley grew up thinking John Abbott was her father, but in fact her father was a tennis pro with whom Katherine had an affair and then introduced to Ashley’s mother, which it would seem to me Ashley might resent.

As for Beth Maitland, our first Emmy Award–winning actress, I swear that woman is lit from within, and with John Abbott gone, we need her back full-time as the heart and the moral compass of the Abbott family, the true reincarnation of her father. It thrills us all when Beth comes to work, and what a joy to see her blossom offstage as well, as a happily married woman with a gorgeous sixteen-year-old daughter, four horses (including a miniature horse), four dogs, two miniature burros, and a hilarious goat.

And then there’s the original Winters family: Kristoff St. John, Victoria Rowell, Shemar Moore, and Tonya Lee Williams. Each of them sensationally gifted and all of them essential to the foundation of
Y&R
. Kristoff, aka Neil Winters, a former child actor (I have a framed photo of him and Tricia Cast in my bedroom, from their days together on
The Bad News Bears
TV series when they were about twelve years old) and a two-time Emmy winner, joined the show in 1991 and is still with us as, until very recently, the CEO of Katherine’s multibillion-dollar corporation, and here’s hoping he will be again. He’s a wonderful dad and a devoted activist for his beloved charities.

Victoria joined
Y&R
in 1990 and, with a few interruptions, was with us until 2007. The talent, energy, and spirit she brought to the show were incredible and irreplaceable—she somehow managed to juggle her essential role as Drucilla Winters with a regular prime-time job on Dick Van Dyke’s
Diagnosis Murder
while also maintaining her passions as a ballerina, an advocate for foster children (having been a foster child herself), a bestselling author, a wife, and a mother.

Shemar, one of the most gorgeous men in the history of daytime, arrived in 1994 as Neil’s brother, Malcolm, with a swagger, a flair, an intensity, and a playfulness that made him incredibly exciting to work with. He left in 2005 for a leading role on the CBS hit series
Criminal Minds
, and I couldn’t be happier for him while selfishly missing that irresistible smile.

Tonya, aka Dr. Olivia Barber Williams, arrived in 1990 and, despite a lot of protests, including mine, left in 2005, with only rare and all-too-brief appearances ever since. She was the perfect grounded, logical, well-educated counterpart to her sister, Victoria Rowell’s Drucilla, solid as a rock and a joy on the set. She’s gone on to become a producer, a director, and a writer, and no one is more deserving of all the success that’s coming her way.

Patty Weaver: In 1982 an adorable blonde named Patty Weaver came on board as Gina Roma, restaurant owner and sister of Genoa City’s own rock star Danny Romalotti (Michael Damien). Gina made the best lasagna in town, and Gina’s Place was one of the town’s hottest hangouts, kind of the 1980s version of Crimson Lights, until Kevin Fisher burned it down in an attempt to kill Brad and Traci Abbott Carlton’s daughter, Colleen. (Not to worry, we all got over it.) Gina was one of our most beloved characters, and Patty was one of our most beloved colleagues, with a singing voice like an angel. (Between Patty Weaver and Beth Maitland,
Y&R
has been blessed with two of the most beautiful voices you’ll ever hear.) I’m told there’s something called “YouTube” on something called “the Internet” on something called “a computer.” (I admit it, I’m technologically challenged, and furthermore, I don’t care.) If any of this sounds familiar to you, please do go on YouTube and look for footage called “Gina Sings to
The Young and the Restless
Theme.” It’s from 1983, a bit grainy and scratchy, but you’ll never hear our theme song sung more gorgeously. Patty’s last appearance on
Y&R
was in 2009. She married one of our late, great writers, Jerry Birn, and has retired from acting. We get together with Lee Bell several times a year, and I’ll keep nagging Patty to become the voice teacher I’m convinced she’s meant to be—if she can teach me to sing “What I Did for Love” at a fan event, she’s as good as it gets.

And even though I’ve talked about her in other chapters, I have to give one more verbal hug to Jess Walton, my sidekick Jill Foster Abbott, the bane of Katherine Chancellor’s existence and my divinely neurotic friend. I don’t say it often enough to her, but Jess, throughout all these years, on-screen and off, what on earth would I have done without you?

I
f this chapter sounds like a very long love letter to some of the coworkers who have helped form the core of daytime’s number-one soap opera since 1988, it’s only because that’s exactly what it is, and I make no apologies for it. I know and love these people, and I want you to know and love them too, whether you’re new to
The Young and the Restless
, have watched for years, or have never seen a single episode. I have faith in the future of
Y&R
because I have faith in its past and the goldmine Bill Bell created with an embarrassment of riches still waiting to be explored. Soap operas have outlived their usefulness? I don’t think so. No one’s going to convince me that great actors playing great characters involved in great storylines will ever be outdated, and I’ll believe in this show and this unique, historic genre until the day I walk out the doors of the CBS studio for the last time.