NEED TO KNOW
- Eric Braeden opens up about the stigma of working in daytime in this exclusive clip from the new podcast Soapy
- Braeden has played Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless since 1980, making this his 45th year on the soap opera
- The new CBS podcast Soapy is hosted by Rebecca Budig, who previously starred on All My Children and currently stars on The Bold and the Beautiful, and Greg Rikaart, a Y&R alumnus who stars on Days of Our Lives
Eric Braeden’s long career has taken him from the small screen to the big screen and back again — and it taught him that soap opera actors don’t get enough respect.
In an exclusive clip from the first episode of Soapy, CBS’s new podcast all about soap operas and the actors who bring them to life, Braeden chats about his years in Hollywood with fellow soap actors and hosts Rebecca Budig and Greg Rikaart. Braeden, 84, first took on the role of Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless in 1980, and the character and actor have become titans of daytime TV. Before joining the series, he’d worked widely as an actor, including on the TV series The Rat Patrol and in movies like Escape from the Planet of the Apes.
In the clip, Rikaart, 48, says that though some former soap opera stars who moved on from daytime think of the genre as a “training ground,” he doesn’t like that phrasing because it’s still “professional.” Braeden agrees, saying, “You better be prepared.”
Rikaart notes Braeden is “such an advocate” for the soap opera genre and asks if he’s had people “looking down upon” the work they do.
“Oh, they all do,” Braeden says. The Daytime Emmy winner continues, “I remember colleagues I used to work with, obviously in a nighttime film, when you meet, you say, ‘So what’s up, what’s new with you?’ I said, ‘I’m doing a soap.’ ”
His costars would say, “What? Oh. Huh,” Braeden remembers, mimicking their judgment.
But he feels like he got the last laugh. “They’re all dead, or they’re all gone, or they haven’t worked in years,” he says of those judgmental costars. “I’m still at it.”
“Any of them would be lucky to have your career,” Rikaart says. “45 years afterwards,” Braeden says. “I love it.”
“So it’s a stupid prejudice, based on absolute ignorance,” Braeden adds.
Speaking to PEOPLE before Soapy’s launch, Budig, 52, said she’s experienced the same stigma Braedan has. “I remember when I got my first soap, my manager at the time was like, ‘Don’t go do that,’ ” she shared. Budig was cast as Michelle Bauer on Guiding Light in 1995. In 1998, she joined All My Children as Greenlee Smythe, which was particularly exciting because she grew up a fan of the show.
“It’s funny, you’re on a soap, and you want to leave, you want to do something ‘better,’ ” she remembered, but in retrospect, there’s nothing “better than working.”
“And then leaving the soap and going to audition and people being like, ‘Oh, she’s a soap actor,’ and you’re like, ‘Well, I’m an actor,’ ” she said. “You take daytime and you shoot it in a different format, and I am telling you it’ll just look like Grey’s Anatomy.”
Budig eventually starred as Hayden Barnes on General Hospital beginning in 2015 and, since 2024, has played Taylor Hayes on The Bold and the Beautiful.
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“There’s that moment in your 20s and you’re like, I’m going to go off and go do some prime time show or whatever, and then you come back to soaps, and I am proud to be back,” she said. “You realize the joy in working every day, and the people I get to work with, and the family atmosphere that you have.”
Soapy is available now wherever you get your podcasts.
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