Peter Bergman
Marlena has complained that lately the networks have been restricting their promotional efforts to two or so favored soap opera press outlets. I am a veteran soap journalist who has written hundreds of stories about the network soaps for decades and have been fully supportive of these profitable shows. Excluding long-time loyal soap journalists like me is terribly unfair.
So, I decided to get tough, I wrote my CBS press rep an angry email and said, “If you don’t fork over some actor interviews, I’ll refuse to write about your shows anymore.” As Moose, who was staying out of the way, observed: “Don’t mess with Marlena. She kicks butt and takes names.” Well, my little flourish of frustration paid off. A week later I was granted interviews with two great talents of our beloved soap medium: Peter Bergman (Jack Abbott) and Joshua Morrow (Nick Newman) of “The Young and the Restless.” Two treats for moi. Today, I’ll share one with you.
Peter Bergman didn’t know it, but he made me cry as soon as he said hello in a recent phone interview. “Connie, we go back a long way,” he said in that rich, caring voice that is so familiar to so many fans. Fact is, I never had the privilege of interviewing him before. But as I told him, I was a huge “All My Children” fan, where he played Cliff Warner from 1979-1989 before he took over the role of Jack Abbott from Terry Lester on “Y&R” in 1989.
I told him, “I interviewed ‘AMC’’s casting director Joan D’Incecco, who cast you.” To which he replied, “I in touch with so many ‘AMC’ friends. “We immediately began swapping stories about such luminaries as the late Agnes Nixon, “AMC”’s creator and headwriter, and the late James Mitchell, who played Cliff’s hated father-in-law Palmer Cortlandt.
What a fun interview! Marlena waxed sentimental as we remembered together the busy days of the Eighties and Nineties when the soap opera world was like a big family. And we scribes were always lucky enough to have friendly and truly talented leading men (and women) like Bergman to write about. They were artists second to none who devoted most of their careers to our favorite shows.
Like many soap actors, Bergman began his career in theater. He was born in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where his father, an officer in the Navy, was stationed. His family settled in Crossland, Maryland. He was an athlete and expected to follow that path until a girlfriend (he describes his young self as a “girl chaser”) steered him into an audition for the high school production of “Peter Pan.”
“There was a call for weird kids,” he said, “and someone I was interested in asked me to help her fill out an application for a role.” Surprise! He found himself cast as Captain Hook. “I got to use an English accent, and I fell in love with all crazy, interesting people who loved to do school plays.’
As a young actor, he came to New York to audition for the Off-Broadway production of “Vieux Carre,” Tennessee Williams’ late career autobiographical drama. He missed on that one but scored an even bigger success by getting cast as Dr. Cliff Warner on “All My Children.” Not long after he tackled his soap opera role, his Dr. Cliff got involved with and married the beautiful heiress Nina Cortlandt (Taylor Miller.) Over the years, the couple was married four times, their chief obstacle being Nina’s very rich, possessive, and difficult father, Palmer, played by the late James Mitchell, who became a mentor to the young Bergman. “I was twenty-six when I came on to ‘All My Children,’” Bergman recalls. “James was about sixty. He had been around for a while,” including roles in such Hollywood movies as ‘Carousel.’”
Peter Bergman and wife Mariellen
Unlike their constantly feuding ‘AMC‘ characters, the two actors became close friends over the years. Bergman said, “I watched James and learned so much about acting.” His friend James “was the first one at the hospital when my two children were born,” he said. Bergman was initially married to actress Christine Ebersole. In 1985, he married his current wife, Mariellen. They are the parents of the two long grown-up children. Peter and Mariellen have what is considered to be one of daytime’s most solid marriages.
While he was in “AMC,” Bergman noted, he learned a very important lesson crucial to the success of a soap actor: the
headwriter of soap rules. That means a script is given to the actors, who must do what is written on the page without ever questioning the material. Writing in those days were the great headwriters Agnes Nixon and William J. Bell. “Agnes was never interested in what I thought at all. Bill was a nice guy. I used to see him in the hall at the studio, and we’d talk about our houses and our kids. But we never ever talked Jack Abbott.”
Oh, what a life Bill Bell and his headwriter successors penned for Jack Abbott! When Bergman joined the cast of “Y&R” in 1989. The role of Jack Abbott was and still is very complex. Jack is scion of the rich Jabot cosmetic company family. He has two sisters, Ashley (Eilleen Davidson) and Traci (Beth Maitland) and a brother Billy (Jason Thompson). Bergman recalled with obvious fondness, “I’ve had a great list of leading ladies.” Jack was married to Niki (Melody Thomas Scott) and to Sharon (Sharon Case) and had a long relationship with Phyllis (Michelle Stafford). Bergman said he loves working with Susan Walters, who plays his current wife, Diane, who was recently kidnapped by a crooked psychiatrist named Dr. Lawrence Markham, played by Jere Burns. “She’s so talented,” Bergman raved.
Peter Bergman and Eric Braeden
Has Jack changed over the years? Begman says yes, a lot. “When I first came on Jack was known to be an opportunist and cad, a real manipulator, not terribly concerned about other people’s feelings, Over the years, though, he has learned empathy, learned what it’s like to get his heart broken, what family really means. It’s been a slow evolution, but I’m proud of it. “This past year Jack has had quite a tempestuous relationship with another ex-wife Patty (Stacy Haiduk) to whom he was once married to long ago. His enemy Victor (Eric Braeden) had him kidnapped on a boat where he was seduced by the temptress once again.
Considering all these storylines, Bergman’s leading man Jack has always been a very interesting center of attention in Genoa City. Along with his many years on “All My Children” as Cliff, he’s a good illustration of how superb acting by a leading man is crucial to the success of a soap. Bergman has won four Best Actor Emmys, and has been nominated 20 times.
Speaking of leading men, Bergman said he is always asked about Eric Braden who plays Jack’s sworn personal and business enemy, Victor Newman. “My relationship with Eric is fantastic. It took a long time for us to find each other. In the beginning both Jack and I were pretty cocky and Eric and I struggled. But today we are very proud of what we achieved over the years. Victor and Jack have pretty much one of the most notable relationships on all of TV,” he said proudly. “We’re like oil and water.”
Recently, Bergman said, he was very happy to participate in the recent “Young and Restless/Beyond the Gates” crossover. “It was great to meet the Duprees,” he said of the new soap’s main family. He said CBS “pulled out all the stops” staging an epic tornado in the midst of it. “What wonderful special effects it had!” he said.
Unfortunately, this interview was done just a few days before the announcement that ‘Y&R’’s headwriter since 2009, Josh Griffith, until recently also the show’s executive producer, stepped down as headwriter. Very curiously, the main report of this on a favored soap site did not include Griffith’s reasons for his sudden departure and the show has not yet named a successor. Whoever does come on aboard “Y&R” and steers the next few years of life in Genoa City has great actors of Bergman and Bredan’s stature to work with, including of course Melody Scott Thomas and the rest of the ensemble. Let’s just hope that the show remains number one in the soap ratings as it has been since 1978. CBS can’t afford to lose any of the great profits “Young and Restless” has historically to its coffers.
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