Peter Bergman, King of the Soaps

about that coming up. Bergman took on another of the most durable characters in the history of television, Jack Abbott, on The Young and the Restless. It's the role he still plays today thirty years later. Where doctor Warner was a heartthrob good guy Jack is deliciously complex. He's perpetually trying to live up to his father, medics tycoon John Abbott, perpetually battling rival makeup baron Victor Newman was signed with perpetually remarrying Nicky Newman. Victor's ex I'm trying to be civil.

It's soap perfection. I should know. I too, am a soap opera veteran. This is me in the early eighties on NBC's The Doctors. Tell them you forgot something, lie, I have forgotten something. What's up? What it's like to make love to you? A couple of years after that, I died. Jack Abbott, despite numerous threats to his life and fortune, is still going strong, the star of the show even And that says something because when I started, it was the mature characters who got the juiciest stories.

But now, with few exceptions, it's the younger generation. And to are the stars of the show. Well, I have been both both of the young and the old, and I now call it the young and the rest of us. Um at your time where well, I'm very lucky. I am still in a prominent place in this company, and there are people behind me who are very unhappy to be behind me. I know that well. I mean, obviously

you and I have daytime TV in common. This one guy, David O'Brien, played my fan, and he said to me, he said, don't mock the material, said, don't make fun of you. That's not going to help you. Try to make it work, don't send it up. And or if you're gonna do it, do it first thing in the morning. Let's get all our laughs out early and and and play the absurdity of it all, and then let's all get together and see how good we can make this. We've got to figure it out. Um, you were born

in Cuba. I was born in Guantanamo, baking thus the you know Latin much of the most thing that you see right away, So I always make you a mistake you for, Julio, exactly what did your dad do? My dad was in the navy career, navy man, and we moved every two years of my life. For what seemed like my entire life, we were in Guantanamo for probably four months. But strangely enough, I love Cuban music, I love Cuban food. I have a certain fascination and have

not yet been Did you grow up primarily? Where? Was there one place that he settled for a while. So by the time I was in ninth grade, we settled in Camp Springs, Maryland, outside of Washington, d C. Andrews Air Force, And well, yes, exactly, and moving every couple of years is as an odd thing. You probably talked to plenty of actors who are from the military or from from foreign service or things like that. Every couple of years, you move and well, let's figure out what

we gotta do here. Who do I have to be for this group? And uh I was popular in the last place, and I went to public schools. Did you have a drama bug there where you are? Movie? I sang in a band for a couple of years, you know, rock and roll cover stuff and played dances and things like that. So I had some nerve um, but not not not any great talent for that. I certainly liked my television. I watched old movies occasionally, but not with a kind of fervor that that a lot of people watched.

At the map for where you wanted to go, I didn't have a map. Strange strangely enough, if there was an allegory for kind of my life in general, you know, the first couple of homes you bought, you thought, oh my god, how am I govern ever going to afford this? How am I ever going to make this? Mate work? I I and and somehow it works out. And then you go get another house and you think, I'm never gonna afford this one either, and you figure you're it out.

The drama bugs, strangely enough, was and almost an accident. I was hanging out after school eleventh grade, yes, eleventh grade, and there was a girl auditioning for the school play. And I hung out after school with Margot, trying to get her attention. She saw right through me. I was kind of popular and this was not I was not a normal person to show up at auditions in the theater department. And uh, And so I asked, what are we auditioning for? She said, Peter Pan. I knew this

thing inside out. The Cyril Richard thing with Mary Martin was part of growing up and it went at my age. I'm a little older than you are, and it showed every year and I was parked in front of that thing and I and look there you were. So so there was a form to fill out part reading for and Margot uh handed it in. And when she handed it and she stopped and wrote Captain Hook. Only Captain Hook. I learned this much later. I was, well, well, it was a long process. It's it's because of Mr Darling

at the beginning. It's the largest role in the play, even bigger than Peter Pan. I'm in terms of dialogue. And here you have a high school drama teacher who has his group of people he can count on. He knows who's probably going to play Captain Hook, who's probably gonna play Peter Pan. Incomes this guy who is just I just I had nothing to lose. I just didn't care in a good way, in a good way. So that launch more school plays. Yes, it did it did it got it got me going. I was I was

a pretty lost kid. Um, yeah, pretty lost. UM knows. The moving around a part of I think there was a big part of it. I just want to have a home. There's a lot of you know, going back to to my audition, um, mine was an endless process that included um that I learned later. The head of the drama department, Mr Messina, just passed away. Last year. I went to the teacher's lounge and said, this weird thing going on. I got this guy who keeps coming

in and auditioning really really well. I didn't even heard of him. Well hoo Peter Bergman, Uh nah nah nah. Now he's he's he's kind of all over the place. Um. And then I went in there and the last night I had to read how still the night is nothing sounds alive? Now is the hour when all children in their homes are a bed, their lips bright brown with a good night chocolate, their tongues drowsily searching for belated crumbs housed emptily in their swollen cheeks. I'm in eleventh grade.

This is the coolest thing I have ever read in my life. What a thing to develop a passion for that language. Then, because when I was in high school and I did a high school play, we did Mr. Roberts, and the drama coach said to me, asked some of your friends on the football team if they want to come to Mr. Roberts or whatever? And I was half in, half out. I didn't really care. But for you, when

you leave home, you go to New York after high school. Um, I go to community college nearby for a year and a half. I studied what English uh? And they were auditioning for a play and I was I won a best actor award. At a time another school was doing a show called Celebration and the guy was so much better than I was, and I won, and it drove me crazy. Really, he was so good. What do you think you won? Did he look like a cadaver? Was he not a good looking guy? I don't know. He

was he was. He was great. So I'm a I'm a community college, and there's a poster for auditions for celebration. I can make this right. I can be better than he was in the same role. I did you and I did and how I did and and uh. And it worked out pretty well for me, It really did. While in that a play, my one of the cast mates, a fellow I had just met who became a lifelong friend, Tim Van Pelt, was playing another role, and he was going to New York to audition for the American Academy

of Dramatic Arts. And I had no aspirations, no plans, no anything. I said, you just want to be better than that other guy. I just want to be better than that other guy. And I was looking over my show the old time. I got to New York with two audition pieces. One was from Tchekhov's The Board, and I had quickly they sent an audition book, and I looked through the ones and I liked the words of the check off the board. It was regal and stentorious and and uh and a full of charm and dignity.

And I finished my audition and the fellow who was running the auditions, who was one of the big shots at the school. Um said, okay, um, very nice, can sit down. Um, so did you get a chance to read the play? He said, Yeah, this guy is the bore. He's he's a beast, he's a dreadful, dreadful and George Sanders exactly. Um so anyway, Uh, he was able to

overlook that. But it but it kind of marks um the beginning of my cheating to get there, the foundation of your career, The foundation of my career is false and ugly. But he lets you in. He let me in because I was, I think, honest with him, and he maybe saw something in my my thing. And I was a tall, straight white guy. So uh so yes, I spent two years there and uh in that time, UH got to play many roles again because I was a tall, straight guy, and and they gave me a

lot of a lot of the really plumb roles. And I started to take it seriously, but still not seriously enough. I was a lot of a lot came too easily to me. A lot came too easily to me. Did you think at any time that this wasn't enough? Because I know that when I would enter it, I thought, people said to me, why didn't you study this? And what did gw for political science for three years full time? And people said to me, why don't you why don't you study drama? And I thought, oh god, what a

waste of my parents money. A degree in theater that's useless. Did you think the same thing? No, No, I I didn't die honestly, was just lazy. I I just was lazy. And I'm embarrassed to say that. And uh and and I've spent the second half of my life catching up with all of that, you know, making making right all of those things. So so again I'm faking my way through. And in that time, I I met to the woman who was to be my wife, then, Christine Eversoul of

course has quite the Broadway career. And Christine and I were together for for five years, still good friends, and I'm very grateful married to a lovely love American Academy matter at American Academy. She was upstairs playing, uh Joni Mitchell on one of the pianos, and I'm a big Joni Mitchell fan, and I just uh love love the sound of that that was coming out of that room. And then after you left American campy did you get

married another year? A year out both of us, both of us unemployed, UM living where living on the Upper east Side, two between First and New York and uh, and Christine's career took off well before mine. And all of what I told you in the lack of preparation and the inability to take seriously enough that this is a choice that people make, that people make big sacrifices for this. I'd heard all of this talk and everything.

I just wanted to be a working actor, you know, uh, whatever you know, um, And it didn't happen for me, And I found out I wasn't terribly good at hustling, wasn't terribly good at getting out there and just knocking doors. Now to make it all hapushing. I waited a lot of tables in the place. It was like your your house. I was a waiter at Studio fifty four. Oh okay, so we're closing down. So so I worked at a few places Signed of the Dove, so was UM. I worked there for I did Gara don service and all

of that business. And then UM I finished my waiting career at Rustyes, Rusty Stabs Joint on Third Avenue. Now when you talk about the when we talk about New York, then I get to New York and nineteen seventy nine and Studio fifty four is over. No one's going. I was a waiter. The bus boys were the ones that wore the were the kind of Roman slave boy outfits with a little short shorts and no shirts that hustled

up and waist up. And I would go there and uh, we used the place and clean all the glad, everything was ready. And I turned to this one and all the waiters were male models. They were all gorgeous and not always young. Some of them were like thirty five, and for me that was older. I was twenty two. And I sit there and they were the loveliest guys. They treated me like I was their kid brother, and I said I was. Then the music is playing and

nobody's there. It's empty, and it's nine o'clock. We've been there since six thirty, and we're clean and everything, and I stocking everything, and I go, what do we do now? It looks like a child. I go, what do we do now? And they go what do we do now? And they go all poor drinks and we do lines of Coke on the barbworld, dancing on the clouds. I'll show you what we do now. And it was the craziest, dumbest thing. But that thing of waiting in New York. I mean I did that for a while. Yeah, And

I'm I'm quick to say I liked waiting tables. It was performing, it was it was fine so out whether they were looking for a butler to come to the table or they were looking for a charming fellow to just knock their socks off when you when you're there, the the you're waiting, you're there. You were involved in some theater companies, wasn't It wasn't. I wasn't. Deed. Also, on one hand, if you don't mind my saying so,

it sounds a contradictory. You're not very ambitious and you're not very uh you know, driving yourself, but you form a theater company. Well yes, So life was catching up with me. So you could only fake it so long.

And I was learning that quickly. And I as I watched Christine's career start to take off, I started seeing that that, uh, some investment is really important here and uh and I started studying with a fellow named Bob Smith, a very famous UH Shakespeare scholar who worked Stratford for a very long time before I had done a bit at school and and it was language that I liked

and worked for me. That went on for some time, well into all my children, and then I was one of the heads of the company and putting all my children money into these productions that we were doing, so so they overlapped. She started UM nineteen seventy nine. He started All my Children in nine. UM. I. I actually I got the job at all my children from Rustys, and I was so proud of myself. I gave them a two week notice. I worked with plenty of people who the day they got the job, they were gone

the next day. And I was so proud of myself. I gave him a two week notice, and UH left in some glory to this job. And then I get to all my children. And the audition story again supports this thing we keep talking about it. You've got to be prepared for these things. You got you know, I had three auditions that day. I had a commercial audition in the morning. Everybody looked just like I did. And I walked in there and it was you know, I had I had to wear suit. It was summertime. It

was um. I went from that back to the York Theater, where I had been yesterday reading a new Tennessee Williams play called View Carrey, directed by the Jose Quintaro. So I read the play the day before. I went back there and spent a couple of hours working on the sides for what I was auditioning for that you had to read it all backstage. And I stepped out on the stage and everything that could go wrong did go wrong, just right out of the gate. I was just horrible.

It was just just lost my place. And uh, and a very sweet voice from the audience said thank you, yeah, And I left and I went back to my apartment so disconsolate. I was having growing concerns that I was not going to help for this. This was not the right idea. I'm not good enough, I'm not ready to do the work. I'm not there's something wrong with me. And I got to my apartment and Ricky, my agent,

I was with Don buck Wald and Company. I don't know that name across your career legend, every voice over it exactly right, um and uh, and Ricky Uh called me as she never did to follow up on auditions and said, how do you go? I said it was awful. I was awful. I am awful. You should get rid of me. This was a horrible audition. Terrible and uh and I gotta get off the phone, Ricky. She said, don't forget you have that. All my children audition this afternoon.

Ah ah. I don't even know where I agreed to do this thing, and she she had kind of talked me into it. Yeah, it's work, whatever you know. And I went there and for an under five or like a role for a role, for a role for for for the role. And I went there and I didn't know anything about any of it, but I didn't care. I just didn't care if I get this, if I don't at this time, because there you are. And I went in and everything that could go right did go right.

I'm I'm in the lobby and every every everyone's paired off, everyone's paired off, and cute little couples and everything, and it's me standing there and Mark la Mural walked through and I knew him from a co Jack episode i'd done a while back, and and he says, who are

who are with? And I said, I don't, Uh, I should be important, and in walks this sweet blonde girl who was just oh, she was just adorable and she was so open and kind and lovely and absolutely appropriate for the for the scene that I was doing with her, and we kind of paired off and she was scared, and I kind of kind of hustled her through the thing because we gotta go, We gotta I wish I could remember her name. Um, so funny. What I didn't know was this was the beginning of this wave of

daytime craziness. When I started, there were thirteen soap operas. There are four now. Um they were all doing well, but ABC in particular that that love in the Afternoon thing, I gotta go, yes a starting starting with loving Uh, Ryan's Hope, all my children, One life to live, General Hospital. This juggernaut. David O'Brien, my father said, he said, let me give you a piece of advice. And when we're not working, he says, always refer to the other soaps

and our own soap in French. We save them in French because let make it seem more serious to you our show in Frances and the food or the fire of Love. But uh, it was. It was crazy. There were twelve thirteen million people watching us every day. Schools, college campuses were just unshutdown for three hours during the day. Everyone scheduled their classes around this. Elizabeth Taylor came out

of the closet. Is the you know, the great General Hospital fan Uh Carol, Carol Burnett because st yes you did. Carrol Burnette couldn't stop talking about all my children. She too came on. I got to work with her on the show. Lucci Susan Lucci, of course was was was the far and away the most uh important person there. So I was. I was in a one of those pretty two dimensional roles that you describe all of those love story kind of things. I was young lochinvar the

and and that was my job. But here I am on the soap opera and and my first couple of days, I walked in the makeup room and heard people talking about plays they saw last night. I thought, oh, wait a minute, and uh and pretty intelligent versation. And then I'm introduced to Eileen Hurley. Eileen Hurley was was Gertrude to Olivier's Hamlet on the in the film. Uh. And then I you know, and one by one read by

male area. I mean, oh my god. I did the show and I would say to these people Jim Pritchett, Jim Pritchett, and uh Jim Pritchett who looked like Burt Reynolds's father with that mustache. David o'briener played my father. I could name so many more of them who the theater, especially the doctors at thirty Rock in Midtown. Half hour, so much of the cast, um, oh theater centric O'Brien get his big and I said, what are you gonna doing? Her big said, I'm gonna go do King John at

the Paper Milk Player. And they would pre tape and spring early in the day. The cast who had to be at a broad back we had the same thing. We changed the schedule again and again to get people out for curtains. Some very serious actress in this exactly exactly so New York soaps were a great thing because all of these Broadway actors and everybody in the old and the Old after contract, people don't realize. It's like, you know, you're in New York and people just want

to make it. It's like what it was. What Law and Order also did right, Who the hell wasn't on Law and Order in a minute at some point. I mean, it seems like everybody was. And so I'm around people the David Canaries and the James Mitchell's and and I'm telling you what these guys did on these shows. Oh my god, it was fantastic. It was absolutely I would watch with wonder at what these actors could do in

the TV show, the show I'm on. I'm stunned. So eventually, did you have any I mean, when I'm assuming when you're one of the stars of these shows and you are indeed one of the stars that they showed doing that ten years, you were there ten years, do the writers and do the producers coming do you and start to say to you, you know, what do you want to do to that? Never that never happens, that never ever happens. What do you want? What do you want

to play? That job came to an end before I was ready for it to come to an end and a confluence of things happening exactly the wrong time, or it turns out exactly the right time. Soap opera star Peter Bergman, I've interviewed one other Daytime Emmy winner on this program and that, believe it or not, is Julianne Moore. She won for her work as Franny Hughes and Franny's twins sister Sabrina on As the World Turns. The dialogue is so rough, so basic. All you're doing is is

establishing story. I used to do what they called emotional I called it and any emotional applicate where if I had to say something that was really just plot oriented, I try to like cry on top of it or laugh on top of it or anything just to make it mean something. Here, Yeah, because it's all exposition. My interview with Julianne Moore, it's not just about soaps is in our archive that Here's the Thing dot org more with Peter Bergman when we return, I'm Alec Baldwin and

this is Here's the thing. Actor. Peter Bergman is Jack Abbott on The Young and the Restless, but before then he was dashing rich Dr Cliff Warner on All My Children, married most of the time to Nina Cortland. Their relationship was on the cover of Soap Opera Magazine throughout the eighties. Soaps dot com and if it's not bookmarked, it should be puts them first in a list of soap opera super pupples. The couple even has its own Wikipedia entry.

Meina Courtland was played by Taylor Miller. If I had to name the seven most important women in my life, Taylor Miller would be in there. I, I, we, we, We rode the crest of this spacetime rave together. John Rowland was my mother. You're on this juggernaut and and and and when when it ends, you you didn't think it was gonna end. You were prepared for it to end. I wasn't prepared for it to end. Uh No, No, they sent uh she Taylor and I off in the sunset.

This is what the audience wants anyway. She's she wants to leave. She wants to go have a family and have a life in Chicago with her her husband, and uh so she's leaving. So so we had a brand new produce, executive producer, brand new head writer, had no personal commitment to the history of the show or the character I played or anything. And they've kind of, you know what, We'll just let them both go off in the sunset. And I was just hammered by it. It's

going on without me. I found a home and again this goes back to the to the military thing. I had found a home and I had made myself a member of that family in a big way. And it ended. And how much how long did you stay after it ended? So to notify you, then you're gonna exactly right. So they let me know in late January, and I worked till September six. It was a long time. Yeah, it was nasty and and I would love to tell you I was strong enough to pick myself up, dust myself off,

and and get onto the next thing. And I was thunderstruck by it. My wife was seven months pregnant with our second child. We had just bought the apartment next door and joined the two. I met her through a blind date. Uh, my friend Michael had had introduced us. And what was she doing? And she was working at thirty Rock. She worked in NBC Sports for the guy that did contracts for everything. And we went to Odeon downtown and with with Michael and uh, Marian's cousin Beth.

Who who's Michael? Okay, here's here's a good twist. Michael Nader, Michael Miner, Michael Miner, who's any bells? Okay? I have a story for you. Three years ago, my closest friend in the world died. Not Mike Miner who lived in my building, Mike Mimer, who was on Petticoat Junction. Mike Miner, he was I lived in his building. I know that, I know that very well. I live very well. Was missed myself today. I had no reason to do this, Alec,

I'm on a very busy schedule right now. This was an opportune to say thank you for being a good guy to my friend Michael. And some of his darkest days, I'm telling you you're being kind to him outside your building, in your lobby, would sometimes make his week. God. And

this is a guy who had quite a career. I mean, I said to my wife, I get a picture from Pettico Junction and he's the boyfriend, strapping, good looking, super handsomely And I turned to my wife and I go, that's Mike Minor that we know who lives across that. Because he really smoked himself. He died about died of a lifetime of bad choices, and he was talked to him all the time. Struggle to take care of their health. One of the great sense of humors of all times.

And I don't know if you ever children. He was him and all my children. He was there for a couple of years and uh, Susan Lucci's boyfriend on the show. So so Michael and I were on All My Children together, became fast friends. And that time, Uh, Beth McCauley, who's from Massapequa, Long Island, that's where I'm front. I know that, Uh, this is weird. This is weird. So uh, Mike Minor and Beth McCauley from Massapequa, UM took us to Odeon.

Beth head said my cousin's here, uh and said to Michael, um, who can we hook her up with? And he said, she's a redhead. I'll called Burgman and uh and that's how I'm married thirty four years now. Um so anyway, we uh we we had a delicious first date. Uh. And nice to New York, especially when you're younger and a soul new It's nice to be in New York with money in your pocket. It was the greatest thing.

I had a ticket agent. I had somebody I called Frank, and I told him I just read about a play I want to see, and I would get a monthly Bill from Frank and they were at will call. I would just go and I had I first moved there and I had jobs, and I would you know, I would make a little dough. I mean, I just couldn't stop going to see everything. Just magical time and uh. And I was able to drag Michael into those kind

of things. So your first marriage ends when while you're on the sap, and my my first marriage ends while I'm on the soap, while I'm somewhat new on the soap. Uh and uh and uh. It was and that in itself as a soap, that in itself as a soap, and then in itself is I mean, I I don't know anybody who has a good divorce story. It was just it wasn't It wasn't ugly. You don't I know that I died, but but you know, it was a

terrible time. It was. It was. It was really sad, very painful, cutting away the support system you've built around yourself for a long time. And I'm very proud of the fact that Christine and I did manage to keep a friendship all that time. We had some mutual friends who we stayed in touch with, and I was literally at a wedding with her last summer and uh, and

I've loved seeing her her success and she's fantastic. I saw the closing night of when they did the I don't want to see it was the workshop or whatever whatever you want to call this early early I think was at Playwrights when they playwrights. Yeah, when they did Yeah, Oh, oh my god. She brought the house down. She's so talented. But when you how soon after you get divorced, you can be married. So I got remarried probably three four years later. I married this just amazing woman. Oh god,

everybody should be loved like I am loved. Yeah, you're lucky. When does l A become an idea? L A The three things I was not going to do when all my children ended. I was not going to replace anybody with replacements and kind of work on all my children when characters left. I was not going to do another soap right away. I'm I'm just I'm doing soup right now. And I was not moving to l A. There's no what happened. There's no way I moved to l A

replaced somebody. That's so so, I'm I'm unemployed on the shores of Fairfield Beach, where we had a summer house we had already paid for. Um that we you know, get get away Fairfield, Connecticut. Everyone else was going out to Long Island and and Fire Island and and and the Hampton's And we went to Fairfield, Connecticut and it

was swell right in the water. Uh and Uh. I was walking up and down that beach and I got a call from my agent saying, Um, the Young and the Restless just called and want to know how tall you do? You want to come out and spend the rest of your life. I'm gonna pay you bags of money. It was how how tall? They wanted to know? Am I? And I said, well, what is what? Don't even call

them back? So what I didn't know is Young and the Restless had lost an actor named uh Terry Lester, who had played the character of Jack Abbott for ten years. Very pop at her character, he had decided to to move on. And uh and the executive producer, was married to one of the stars of the show, and the two of them were off on their way to Canada in a flight and she had all these say uh. Melodie Thomas Scott and ed Scott on a flight to Canada. She had some of her soap opera magazines with her,

and I'm on the cover of all of them. I was not a likely person to get let go of UM and I wasn't. I wasn't honest, always a surprise to everybody. So I was on the cover of all these magazines. And she turned to ED and they'd already tested six guys and and COMI that week came in. She was summarily dismissed in the same way some hot dogs in Toronto. So so um Meldie Thomas Scott turns to her husband and says, that's Jack and uh. He said, okay, well find out how Tallly is first. So that's how

that first call happened. You know, in New York we always had a very kind of looking down our nose at the Los Angeles soaps. Like in New York you went to the theater, and you went to the symphony, and you went to the uh you know, restaurants, and it was New York and out here everybody was sicking. Everybody looked perfect. You've heard all the names because of the show, the hung and the breastless and all those put down names. When you get out here and you

start the show. It was night and day. I went from standing in the makeup room talking about the show last night, and I got here and everyone was off in their dressing rooms. There were people that were on the same episode that I was on for the first two months I was there, and I never met them. I never clapped eyes on them, I never saw them in the makeup room. Everybody was off in their own world. They're probably developing new ideas for something. And you know,

it was so different, different things. I walked down on the set and there were cute cards everywhere, que cards. But here's the cool thing. After ten years of watching a couple of guys have those roles, the role I've got the role on this ship about you, it's about me, and it's and this is a mercurial character. One day, the nicest brother anybody could ever have. The next day a despotic boss and dreadful, manipulative, venal, self centered idiot um.

The next day, uh, careful kind lover the next day it was one way, one of the roles. I got one of the roles in daytime and it took off, and I was there a year and a half when I won my first Emity. You want three or four? I won three, nominated, I don't, yeah, nomination nominated for a lot of them, and you want a few. And

when you were there and you're doing the show. How what happens to in terms of the culture of living in Los Angeles um slowly as the kids grow up and I get to coach their basketball teams and we get to meet their friends, and we and school starts and we get to end. I got to liking it more and more. But the first seven years I fought this with everything. We kept to our apartment for seven years.

We kept our apartment on West ninety Street between Central Park Western Columbus for the first seven years we were there. I lived in the Eldorado for twenty years. Is that? Yeah? I member? I member. El Dorado is at the end of that block. I remember my trinity. You're touring liquors right there. You are so there. You you know this is I don't want to get into this now, but it's like, you know, I'm not sure I'm wanna live in New York anymore. Yeah, yeah, I get that. It's

a pretty hard line. Had I to do this all over again. As I said, I fought it tooth and nail. The thought that the dragged, kicking and screaming to the best thing that ever happened to me. Um, I had I to do it over again. The first day I would have bought a surfboard, and the second day I would have bought a set of golf clubs. And I would have embraced with life in southern California. What Rome? I was standing there saying, well, this is a cultural waste land. Who would live here? As soon as his

job is over, I'm headed back to New York. I fought it with everything, and that's right, that's right, that's right. Now I've come to embrace the healthy You mean, I was one of the great l A haters of all time, and you learn to make peace with him. You get a break for how much in your contract you have off two weeks in December? That's it? Well, you know I haven't get out to vacation time. I have outs in my contract. But could you do? But the way outs work is is they have to cast it so

far ahead of time. I would do a play. Plays are are hard hardest harder to do. It's quite a while ago, quite a while ago. So so it would be the taking schedule change, because everybody told me, like Kims Zimmer would tell me years ago when they reconstituted Guiding Light and then you know, they were the I remember whether they were going to cancel it or they did cancel it or whatever, and they said to them, we're gonna shoot multiple episodes. We're gonna we're gonna block shoot.

That's that's that's what you're doing. That that's the norm now. So so we we take five or six shows in four days. We only work Tuesday through Friday. Um, and not because it gives the actors a break, but because it's less expensive and uh. And we pretty much everything's in one take, which which is both good and bad. Uh. If if I can get time with you to rehearse in our dressing rooms, let's suit in one take. Yeah. Yeah, my first take is always my best, always has been

doing third and four take. That's what. I don't know the material. When you when you are doing film and somebody's asking you for take nine, I don't know how you do that. I go out of my mind. I'd start adding words, I'd start you know, oh yeah, yeah, I like I like to do six or eight takes myself, just to play with it. But but but for me, it's like you know that that I don't like to do thirty takes. I mean money, yeah, but but every everything is in one take. We we do things, uh it

up well if you flood will pick it up. But but for the most part in scenes with me, um and I say this is with as much modesty as I can muster. Um. My job is to find you, and you and I are going to build this scene together. They sometimes they don't have time to direct at all. So what you the conversation you and I have about what has to happen in this scene is a critical directors. They are they and not because they're any less than the directors we once had, but because it's going so fast.

They are in a pressure cooker. They're making camera shots work like crazy because we're directing on the fly with camera changes and things like that. So so it's up to act. So we've run this. You and I know this thing inside out before we ever go out there, or I or I haven't done my job. When I did thirty Rock, they always gave me, like the real lengthy speeches I would do the character was windy and they haven't got I would hold forth for like a page,

and I have two pages. And I never memorized the night before because I knew they would change it, and I knew I'd come in and saying, and we don't have that. So I would sit down in the makeup chairm memorize and I was a good study. And you have to what kills me. People don't get this, they say to me. I would have you know quite a few people during mic where they say, well, you're very good at memorizing. Your aligned you to the soap w I said I was on a soap. Yep, I said

I was on a soap. I had memorize. If it was a thirty page script, I was in twenty three pages of it. And I said the same thing fifteen different ways. Gret I love you, Greta. Please don't leave me, Greta, Please, don't you understand Greta. You know those environments, it's intense, even before this block shooting. Now when they were in the old way, you shot a show a day. Maybe

it's a pressure cooker. Uh and the peacock men. I'm not getting into like your show, but the peacock men, men who are the leads, men who drive the show. People don't understand that there's a little competition there, you know. I mean, yeah, I mean you have to, you have to hold your own. But it demands a kind of faith in each other that I'm not just protecting my character. How about I make you look really good and you make me look really good. This is this is the

Peter Bergman school of doing this. And I can. I can beat you down if you if you want to, if you want to go toe to toe where you're going to embarrass me, or you're going to uh in a scene, in a scene and in a scene in daytime television. You're not gonna do that to me. No, No, that much I can handle. And so when you say, you know, the big guys uh protecting their turf, there's a little bit of that, but I hate that. Had a little bit of that. Now for you one lessing.

A couple lessons I want to ask you, um, the you know, the soap proper culture. The fans, David O'Brien said to me, they know you. They watch you every day. It's out like nighttime TV, he said, they see you every day. And he said a relationship has formed, and he's and when they meet you, they're ready for that relationship to go to the next level. Yet so so so there are different kinds of fame. Uh, someone runs

into Robert Redford on the street, What do you really say? Um, hey, liked liked your your movie with I Love the Natural? Um which what are your butch Cassidy And they just say, oh my god, um me. They could have a half hour conversation with me without ever discussing me or the role I play. Half an hour discussion. So there is this kind of sense of ownership that we run into quite often with this kind of fame that that's in my living room every day. Of course, I know I'm

going to talk. I'm not going to back off. I'm gonna talk. Who was Jack married to? Now? Jack is not married right now? Yeah, I've lost four wedding rings by my characters not being married and being out on the set and having the wardrobe guy goes and pointing to my ring finger and I take it off and I put it in my costume never to see it again or something. I can't I if I lost my daughter, but I know Jack's not married right now, and and Jack is uh. Jack is now de facto the head

of the Abbot family. And they're really only two big families in town, the Newman's in the Abbots. And thirty years, thirty years. How do you want Jack to go out? Or can you even say? You know? There? I want him to be dragged off to prison for putting Victor through a wall. There's a character has been his his nemesis for the entire time he's been there. And Brandon, yeah, and and and and it is written in the stars that he has to win every battle. Victor Eric Britten's

character always always, always wins. I want to win one major battle and be dragged out screaming at the penitentiary. Off to the penitentiary. I guess that's my Jack's last day. You're in Rome, and by the time the battle is over, you're holding him down and like you keep fear and as we close in on his face, he has to make the choice do you pull up? But I've just been through too much. I'm just gonna hold his face down.

If over thirty years, hundreds of writers and producers had forced you to lose to your arch enemy over and over again, well, you might have that kind of fantasy too. The kind, gracious and very talented Peter Bergman appears today and tomorrow and the day after that at on your local CBS station, that's Central. I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is here's the thing.