Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Actor Peter Bergman is an undisputed master of one particular
Speaker 1: corner of the acting world, the soaps. For ten years,
Speaker 1: starting in ninety nine, he played Cliff Warner, the legendary
Speaker 1: good guy doctor on All My Children. Even if you've
Speaker 1: never seen a soap opera, you've heard this. I'm not
Speaker 1: a doctor, but I play one on TV. After a
Speaker 1: headline grabbing firing from All My Children, you'll hear more
Speaker 1: about that coming up. Bergman took on another of the
Speaker 1: most durable characters in the history of television, Jack Abbott,
Speaker 1: on The Young and the Restless. It's the role he
Speaker 1: still plays today thirty years later. Where doctor Warner was
Speaker 1: a heartthrob good guy Jack is deliciously complex. He's perpetually
Speaker 1: trying to live up to his father, medics tycoon John Abbott,
Speaker 1: perpetually battling rival makeup baron Victor Newman was signed with
Speaker 1: perpetually remarrying Nicky Newman. Victor's ex I'm trying to be civil.
Speaker 1: It's soap perfection. I should know. I too, am a
Speaker 1: soap opera veteran. This is me in the early eighties
Speaker 1: on NBC's The Doctors. Tell them you forgot something, lie,
Speaker 1: I have forgotten something. What's up? What it's like to
Speaker 1: make love to you? A couple of years after that,
Speaker 1: I died. Jack Abbott, despite numerous threats to his life
Speaker 1: and fortune, is still going strong, the star of the
Speaker 1: show even And that says something because when I started,
Speaker 1: it was the mature characters who got the juiciest stories.
Speaker 1: But now, with few exceptions, it's the younger generation. And
Speaker 1: to are the stars of the show. Well, I have
Speaker 1: been both both of the young and the old, and
Speaker 1: I now call it the young and the rest of us.
Speaker 1: Um at your time where well, I'm very lucky. I
Speaker 1: am still in a prominent place in this company, and
Speaker 1: there are people behind me who are very unhappy to
Speaker 1: be behind me. I know that well. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: you and I have daytime TV in common. This one guy,
Speaker 1: David O'Brien, played my fan, and he said to me,
Speaker 1: he said, don't mock the material, said, don't make fun
Speaker 1: of you. That's not going to help you. Try to
Speaker 1: make it work, don't send it up. And or if
Speaker 1: you're gonna do it, do it first thing in the morning.
Speaker 1: Let's get all our laughs out early and and and
Speaker 1: play the absurdity of it all, and then let's all
Speaker 1: get together and see how good we can make this.
Speaker 1: We've got to figure it out. Um, you were born
Speaker 1: in Cuba. I was born in Guantanamo, baking thus the
Speaker 1: you know Latin much of the most thing that you
Speaker 1: see right away, So I always make you a mistake
Speaker 1: you for, Julio, exactly what did your dad do? My
Speaker 1: dad was in the navy career, navy man, and we
Speaker 1: moved every two years of my life. For what seemed
Speaker 1: like my entire life, we were in Guantanamo for probably
Speaker 1: four months. But strangely enough, I love Cuban music, I
Speaker 1: love Cuban food. I have a certain fascination and have
Speaker 1: not yet been Did you grow up primarily? Where? Was
Speaker 1: there one place that he settled for a while. So
Speaker 1: by the time I was in ninth grade, we settled
Speaker 1: in Camp Springs, Maryland, outside of Washington, d C. Andrews
Speaker 1: Air Force, And well, yes, exactly, and moving every couple
Speaker 1: of years is as an odd thing. You probably talked
Speaker 1: to plenty of actors who are from the military or
Speaker 1: from from foreign service or things like that. Every couple
Speaker 1: of years, you move and well, let's figure out what
Speaker 1: we gotta do here. Who do I have to be
Speaker 1: for this group? And uh I was popular in the
Speaker 1: last place, and I went to public schools. Did you
Speaker 1: have a drama bug there where you are? Movie? I
Speaker 1: sang in a band for a couple of years, you know,
Speaker 1: rock and roll cover stuff and played dances and things
Speaker 1: like that. So I had some nerve um, but not
Speaker 1: not not any great talent for that. I certainly liked
Speaker 1: my television. I watched old movies occasionally, but not with
Speaker 1: a kind of fervor that that a lot of people watched.
Speaker 1: At the map for where you wanted to go, I
Speaker 1: didn't have a map. Strange strangely enough, if there was
Speaker 1: an allegory for kind of my life in general, you know,
Speaker 1: the first couple of homes you bought, you thought, oh
Speaker 1: my god, how am I govern ever going to afford this?
Speaker 1: How am I ever going to make this? Mate work?
Speaker 1: I I and and somehow it works out. And then
Speaker 1: you go get another house and you think, I'm never
Speaker 1: gonna afford this one either, and you figure you're it out.
Speaker 1: The drama bugs, strangely enough, was and almost an accident.
Speaker 1: I was hanging out after school eleventh grade, yes, eleventh grade,
Speaker 1: and there was a girl auditioning for the school play.
Speaker 1: And I hung out after school with Margot, trying to
Speaker 1: get her attention. She saw right through me. I was
Speaker 1: kind of popular and this was not I was not
Speaker 1: a normal person to show up at auditions in the
Speaker 1: theater department. And uh, And so I asked, what are
Speaker 1: we auditioning for? She said, Peter Pan. I knew this
Speaker 1: thing inside out. The Cyril Richard thing with Mary Martin
Speaker 1: was part of growing up and it went at my age.
Speaker 1: I'm a little older than you are, and it showed
Speaker 1: every year and I was parked in front of that
Speaker 1: thing and I and look there you were. So so
Speaker 1: there was a form to fill out part reading for
Speaker 1: and Margot uh handed it in. And when she handed
Speaker 1: it and she stopped and wrote Captain Hook. Only Captain Hook.
Speaker 1: I learned this much later. I was, well, well, it
Speaker 1: was a long process. It's it's because of Mr Darling
Speaker 1: at the beginning. It's the largest role in the play,
Speaker 1: even bigger than Peter Pan. I'm in terms of dialogue.
Speaker 1: And here you have a high school drama teacher who
Speaker 1: has his group of people he can count on. He
Speaker 1: knows who's probably going to play Captain Hook, who's probably
Speaker 1: gonna play Peter Pan. Incomes this guy who is just
Speaker 1: I just I had nothing to lose. I just didn't
Speaker 1: care in a good way, in a good way. So
Speaker 1: that launch more school plays. Yes, it did it did
Speaker 1: it got it got me going. I was I was
Speaker 1: a pretty lost kid. Um, yeah, pretty lost. UM knows.
Speaker 1: The moving around a part of I think there was
Speaker 1: a big part of it. I just want to have
Speaker 1: a home. There's a lot of you know, going back
Speaker 1: to to my audition, um, mine was an endless process
Speaker 1: that included um that I learned later. The head of
Speaker 1: the drama department, Mr Messina, just passed away. Last year.
Speaker 1: I went to the teacher's lounge and said, this weird
Speaker 1: thing going on. I got this guy who keeps coming
Speaker 1: in and auditioning really really well. I didn't even heard
Speaker 1: of him. Well hoo Peter Bergman, Uh nah nah nah.
Speaker 1: Now he's he's he's kind of all over the place. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I went in there and the last night
Speaker 1: I had to read how still the night is nothing
Speaker 1: sounds alive? Now is the hour when all children in
Speaker 1: their homes are a bed, their lips bright brown with
Speaker 1: a good night chocolate, their tongues drowsily searching for belated
Speaker 1: crumbs housed emptily in their swollen cheeks. I'm in eleventh grade.
Speaker 1: This is the coolest thing I have ever read in
Speaker 1: my life. What a thing to develop a passion for
Speaker 1: that language. Then, because when I was in high school
Speaker 1: and I did a high school play, we did Mr. Roberts,
Speaker 1: and the drama coach said to me, asked some of
Speaker 1: your friends on the football team if they want to
Speaker 1: come to Mr. Roberts or whatever? And I was half in,
Speaker 1: half out. I didn't really care. But for you, when
Speaker 1: you leave home, you go to New York after high school. Um,
Speaker 1: I go to community college nearby for a year and
Speaker 1: a half. I studied what English uh? And they were
Speaker 1: auditioning for a play and I was I won a
Speaker 1: best actor award. At a time another school was doing
Speaker 1: a show called Celebration and the guy was so much
Speaker 1: better than I was, and I won, and it drove
Speaker 1: me crazy. Really, he was so good. What do you
Speaker 1: think you won? Did he look like a cadaver? Was
Speaker 1: he not a good looking guy? I don't know. He
Speaker 1: was he was. He was great. So I'm a I'm
Speaker 1: a community college, and there's a poster for auditions for celebration.
Speaker 1: I can make this right. I can be better than
Speaker 1: he was in the same role. I did you and
Speaker 1: I did and how I did and and uh. And
Speaker 1: it worked out pretty well for me, It really did.
Speaker 1: While in that a play, my one of the cast mates,
Speaker 1: a fellow I had just met who became a lifelong friend,
Speaker 1: Tim Van Pelt, was playing another role, and he was
Speaker 1: going to New York to audition for the American Academy
Speaker 1: of Dramatic Arts. And I had no aspirations, no plans,
Speaker 1: no anything. I said, you just want to be better
Speaker 1: than that other guy. I just want to be better
Speaker 1: than that other guy. And I was looking over my
Speaker 1: show the old time. I got to New York with
Speaker 1: two audition pieces. One was from Tchekhov's The Board, and
Speaker 1: I had quickly they sent an audition book, and I
Speaker 1: looked through the ones and I liked the words of
Speaker 1: the check off the board. It was regal and stentorious
Speaker 1: and and uh and a full of charm and dignity.
Speaker 1: And I finished my audition and the fellow who was
Speaker 1: running the auditions, who was one of the big shots
Speaker 1: at the school. Um said, okay, um, very nice, can
Speaker 1: sit down. Um, so did you get a chance to
Speaker 1: read the play? He said, Yeah, this guy is the bore.
Speaker 1: He's he's a beast, he's a dreadful, dreadful and George
Speaker 1: Sanders exactly. Um so anyway, Uh, he was able to
Speaker 1: overlook that. But it but it kind of marks um
Speaker 1: the beginning of my cheating to get there, the foundation
Speaker 1: of your career, The foundation of my career is false
Speaker 1: and ugly. But he lets you in. He let me
Speaker 1: in because I was, I think, honest with him, and
Speaker 1: he maybe saw something in my my thing. And I
Speaker 1: was a tall, straight white guy. So uh so yes,
Speaker 1: I spent two years there and uh in that time,
Speaker 1: UH got to play many roles again because I was
Speaker 1: a tall, straight guy, and and they gave me a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of the really plumb roles. And
Speaker 1: I started to take it seriously, but still not seriously enough.
Speaker 1: I was a lot of a lot came too easily
Speaker 1: to me. A lot came too easily to me. Did
Speaker 1: you think at any time that this wasn't enough? Because
Speaker 1: I know that when I would enter it, I thought,
Speaker 1: people said to me, why didn't you study this? And
Speaker 1: what did gw for political science for three years full time?
Speaker 1: And people said to me, why don't you why don't
Speaker 1: you study drama? And I thought, oh god, what a
Speaker 1: waste of my parents money. A degree in theater that's useless.
Speaker 1: Did you think the same thing? No, No, I I
Speaker 1: didn't die honestly, was just lazy. I I just was lazy.
Speaker 1: And I'm embarrassed to say that. And uh and and
Speaker 1: I've spent the second half of my life catching up
Speaker 1: with all of that, you know, making making right all
Speaker 1: of those things. So so again I'm faking my way through.
Speaker 1: And in that time, I I met to the woman
Speaker 1: who was to be my wife, then, Christine Eversoul of
Speaker 1: course has quite the Broadway career. And Christine and I
Speaker 1: were together for for five years, still good friends, and
Speaker 1: I'm very grateful married to a lovely love American Academy
Speaker 1: matter at American Academy. She was upstairs playing, uh Joni
Speaker 1: Mitchell on one of the pianos, and I'm a big
Speaker 1: Joni Mitchell fan, and I just uh love love the
Speaker 1: sound of that that was coming out of that room.
Speaker 1: And then after you left American campy did you get
Speaker 1: married another year? A year out both of us, both
Speaker 1: of us unemployed, UM living where living on the Upper
Speaker 1: east Side, two between First and New York and uh,
Speaker 1: and Christine's career took off well before mine. And all
Speaker 1: of what I told you in the lack of preparation
Speaker 1: and the inability to take seriously enough that this is
Speaker 1: a choice that people make, that people make big sacrifices
Speaker 1: for this. I'd heard all of this talk and everything.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be a working actor, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: whatever you know, um, And it didn't happen for me,
Speaker 1: And I found out I wasn't terribly good at hustling,
Speaker 1: wasn't terribly good at getting out there and just knocking doors.
Speaker 1: Now to make it all hapushing. I waited a lot
Speaker 1: of tables in the place. It was like your your house.
Speaker 1: I was a waiter at Studio fifty four. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: so we're closing down. So so I worked at a
Speaker 1: few places Signed of the Dove, so was UM. I
Speaker 1: worked there for I did Gara don service and all
Speaker 1: of that business. And then UM I finished my waiting
Speaker 1: career at Rustyes, Rusty Stabs Joint on Third Avenue. Now
Speaker 1: when you talk about the when we talk about New York,
Speaker 1: then I get to New York and nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: and Studio fifty four is over. No one's going. I
Speaker 1: was a waiter. The bus boys were the ones that
Speaker 1: wore the were the kind of Roman slave boy outfits
Speaker 1: with a little short shorts and no shirts that hustled
Speaker 1: up and waist up. And I would go there and uh,
Speaker 1: we used the place and clean all the glad, everything
Speaker 1: was ready. And I turned to this one and all
Speaker 1: the waiters were male models. They were all gorgeous and
Speaker 1: not always young. Some of them were like thirty five,
Speaker 1: and for me that was older. I was twenty two.
Speaker 1: And I sit there and they were the loveliest guys.
Speaker 1: They treated me like I was their kid brother, and
Speaker 1: I said I was. Then the music is playing and
Speaker 1: nobody's there. It's empty, and it's nine o'clock. We've been
Speaker 1: there since six thirty, and we're clean and everything, and
Speaker 1: I stocking everything, and I go, what do we do now?
Speaker 1: It looks like a child. I go, what do we
Speaker 1: do now? And they go what do we do now?
Speaker 1: And they go all poor drinks and we do lines
Speaker 1: of Coke on the barbworld, dancing on the clouds. I'll
Speaker 1: show you what we do now. And it was the craziest,
Speaker 1: dumbest thing. But that thing of waiting in New York.
Speaker 1: I mean I did that for a while. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I'm I'm quick to say I liked waiting tables. It
Speaker 1: was performing, it was it was fine so out whether
Speaker 1: they were looking for a butler to come to the
Speaker 1: table or they were looking for a charming fellow to
Speaker 1: just knock their socks off when you when you're there,
Speaker 1: the the you're waiting, you're there. You were involved in
Speaker 1: some theater companies, wasn't It wasn't. I wasn't. Deed. Also,
Speaker 1: on one hand, if you don't mind my saying so,
Speaker 1: it sounds a contradictory. You're not very ambitious and you're
Speaker 1: not very uh you know, driving yourself, but you form
Speaker 1: a theater company. Well yes, So life was catching up
Speaker 1: with me. So you could only fake it so long.
Speaker 1: And I was learning that quickly. And I as I
Speaker 1: watched Christine's career start to take off, I started seeing
Speaker 1: that that, uh, some investment is really important here and
Speaker 1: uh and I started studying with a fellow named Bob Smith,
Speaker 1: a very famous UH Shakespeare scholar who worked Stratford for
Speaker 1: a very long time before I had done a bit
Speaker 1: at school and and it was language that I liked
Speaker 1: and worked for me. That went on for some time,
Speaker 1: well into all my children, and then I was one
Speaker 1: of the heads of the company and putting all my
Speaker 1: children money into these productions that we were doing, so
Speaker 1: so they overlapped. She started UM nineteen seventy nine. He
Speaker 1: started All my Children in nine. UM. I. I actually
Speaker 1: I got the job at all my children from Rustys,
Speaker 1: and I was so proud of myself. I gave them
Speaker 1: a two week notice. I worked with plenty of people
Speaker 1: who the day they got the job, they were gone
Speaker 1: the next day. And I was so proud of myself.
Speaker 1: I gave him a two week notice, and UH left
Speaker 1: in some glory to this job. And then I get
Speaker 1: to all my children. And the audition story again supports
Speaker 1: this thing we keep talking about it. You've got to
Speaker 1: be prepared for these things. You got you know, I
Speaker 1: had three auditions that day. I had a commercial audition
Speaker 1: in the morning. Everybody looked just like I did. And
Speaker 1: I walked in there and it was you know, I
Speaker 1: had I had to wear suit. It was summertime. It
Speaker 1: was um. I went from that back to the York Theater,
Speaker 1: where I had been yesterday reading a new Tennessee Williams
Speaker 1: play called View Carrey, directed by the Jose Quintaro. So
Speaker 1: I read the play the day before. I went back
Speaker 1: there and spent a couple of hours working on the
Speaker 1: sides for what I was auditioning for that you had
Speaker 1: to read it all backstage. And I stepped out on
Speaker 1: the stage and everything that could go wrong did go wrong,
Speaker 1: just right out of the gate. I was just horrible.
Speaker 1: It was just just lost my place. And uh, and
Speaker 1: a very sweet voice from the audience said thank you, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I left and I went back to my apartment
Speaker 1: so disconsolate. I was having growing concerns that I was
Speaker 1: not going to help for this. This was not the
Speaker 1: right idea. I'm not good enough, I'm not ready to
Speaker 1: do the work. I'm not there's something wrong with me.
Speaker 1: And I got to my apartment and Ricky, my agent,
Speaker 1: I was with Don buck Wald and Company. I don't
Speaker 1: know that name across your career legend, every voice over
Speaker 1: it exactly right, um and uh, and Ricky Uh called
Speaker 1: me as she never did to follow up on auditions
Speaker 1: and said, how do you go? I said it was awful.
Speaker 1: I was awful. I am awful. You should get rid
Speaker 1: of me. This was a horrible audition. Terrible and uh
Speaker 1: and I gotta get off the phone, Ricky. She said,
Speaker 1: don't forget you have that. All my children audition this afternoon.
Speaker 1: Ah ah. I don't even know where I agreed to
Speaker 1: do this thing, and she she had kind of talked
Speaker 1: me into it. Yeah, it's work, whatever you know. And
Speaker 1: I went there and for an under five or like
Speaker 1: a role for a role, for a role for for
Speaker 1: for the role. And I went there and I didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about any of it, but I didn't care.
Speaker 1: I just didn't care if I get this, if I
Speaker 1: don't at this time, because there you are. And I
Speaker 1: went in and everything that could go right did go right.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm in the lobby and every every everyone's paired off,
Speaker 1: everyone's paired off, and cute little couples and everything, and
Speaker 1: it's me standing there and Mark la Mural walked through
Speaker 1: and I knew him from a co Jack episode i'd
Speaker 1: done a while back, and and he says, who are
Speaker 1: who are with? And I said, I don't, Uh, I
Speaker 1: should be important, and in walks this sweet blonde girl
Speaker 1: who was just oh, she was just adorable and she
Speaker 1: was so open and kind and lovely and absolutely appropriate
Speaker 1: for the for the scene that I was doing with her,
Speaker 1: and we kind of paired off and she was scared,
Speaker 1: and I kind of kind of hustled her through the
Speaker 1: thing because we gotta go, We gotta I wish I
Speaker 1: could remember her name. Um, so funny. What I didn't
Speaker 1: know was this was the beginning of this wave of
Speaker 1: daytime craziness. When I started, there were thirteen soap operas.
Speaker 1: There are four now. Um they were all doing well,
Speaker 1: but ABC in particular that that love in the Afternoon thing,
Speaker 1: I gotta go, yes a starting starting with loving Uh,
Speaker 1: Ryan's Hope, all my children, One life to live, General Hospital.
Speaker 1: This juggernaut. David O'Brien, my father said, he said, let
Speaker 1: me give you a piece of advice. And when we're
Speaker 1: not working, he says, always refer to the other soaps
Speaker 1: and our own soap in French. We save them in
Speaker 1: French because let make it seem more serious to you
Speaker 1: our show in Frances and the food or the fire
Speaker 1: of Love. But uh, it was. It was crazy. There
Speaker 1: were twelve thirteen million people watching us every day. Schools,
Speaker 1: college campuses were just unshutdown for three hours during the day.
Speaker 1: Everyone scheduled their classes around this. Elizabeth Taylor came out
Speaker 1: of the closet. Is the you know, the great General
Speaker 1: Hospital fan Uh Carol, Carol Burnett because st yes you did.
Speaker 1: Carrol Burnette couldn't stop talking about all my children. She
Speaker 1: too came on. I got to work with her on
Speaker 1: the show. Lucci Susan Lucci, of course was was was
Speaker 1: the far and away the most uh important person there.
Speaker 1: So I was. I was in a one of those
Speaker 1: pretty two dimensional roles that you describe all of those
Speaker 1: love story kind of things. I was young lochinvar the
Speaker 1: and and that was my job. But here I am
Speaker 1: on the soap opera and and my first couple of days,
Speaker 1: I walked in the makeup room and heard people talking
Speaker 1: about plays they saw last night. I thought, oh, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, and uh and pretty intelligent versation. And then
Speaker 1: I'm introduced to Eileen Hurley. Eileen Hurley was was Gertrude
Speaker 1: to Olivier's Hamlet on the in the film. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then I you know, and one by one read by
Speaker 1: male area. I mean, oh my god. I did the
Speaker 1: show and I would say to these people Jim Pritchett,
Speaker 1: Jim Pritchett, and uh Jim Pritchett who looked like Burt
Speaker 1: Reynolds's father with that mustache. David o'briener played my father.
Speaker 1: I could name so many more of them who the theater,
Speaker 1: especially the doctors at thirty Rock in Midtown. Half hour,
Speaker 1: so much of the cast, um, oh theater centric O'Brien
Speaker 1: get his big and I said, what are you gonna doing?
Speaker 1: Her big said, I'm gonna go do King John at
Speaker 1: the Paper Milk Player. And they would pre tape and
Speaker 1: spring early in the day. The cast who had to
Speaker 1: be at a broad back we had the same thing.
Speaker 1: We changed the schedule again and again to get people
Speaker 1: out for curtains. Some very serious actress in this exactly
Speaker 1: exactly so New York soaps were a great thing because
Speaker 1: all of these Broadway actors and everybody in the old
Speaker 1: and the Old after contract, people don't realize. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're in New York and people just want
Speaker 1: to make it. It's like what it was. What Law
Speaker 1: and Order also did right, Who the hell wasn't on
Speaker 1: Law and Order in a minute at some point. I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems like everybody was. And so I'm around people
Speaker 1: the David Canaries and the James Mitchell's and and I'm
Speaker 1: telling you what these guys did on these shows. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, it was fantastic. It was absolutely I would
Speaker 1: watch with wonder at what these actors could do in
Speaker 1: the TV show, the show I'm on. I'm stunned. So eventually,
Speaker 1: did you have any I mean, when I'm assuming when
Speaker 1: you're one of the stars of these shows and you
Speaker 1: are indeed one of the stars that they showed doing
Speaker 1: that ten years, you were there ten years, do the
Speaker 1: writers and do the producers coming do you and start
Speaker 1: to say to you, you know, what do you want
Speaker 1: to do to that? Never that never happens, that never
Speaker 1: ever happens. What do you want? What do you want
Speaker 1: to play? That job came to an end before I
Speaker 1: was ready for it to come to an end and
Speaker 1: a confluence of things happening exactly the wrong time, or
Speaker 1: it turns out exactly the right time. Soap opera star
Speaker 1: Peter Bergman, I've interviewed one other Daytime Emmy winner on
Speaker 1: this program and that, believe it or not, is Julianne Moore.
Speaker 1: She won for her work as Franny Hughes and Franny's
Speaker 1: twins sister Sabrina on As the World Turns. The dialogue
Speaker 1: is so rough, so basic. All you're doing is is
Speaker 1: establishing story. I used to do what they called emotional
Speaker 1: I called it and any emotional applicate where if I
Speaker 1: had to say something that was really just plot oriented,
Speaker 1: I try to like cry on top of it or
Speaker 1: laugh on top of it or anything just to make
Speaker 1: it mean something. Here, Yeah, because it's all exposition. My
Speaker 1: interview with Julianne Moore, it's not just about soaps is
Speaker 1: in our archive that Here's the Thing dot org more
Speaker 1: with Peter Bergman when we return, I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: this is Here's the thing. Actor. Peter Bergman is Jack
Speaker 1: Abbott on The Young and the Restless, but before then
Speaker 1: he was dashing rich Dr Cliff Warner on All My Children,
Speaker 1: married most of the time to Nina Cortland. Their relationship
Speaker 1: was on the cover of Soap Opera Magazine throughout the eighties.
Speaker 1: Soaps dot com and if it's not bookmarked, it should
Speaker 1: be puts them first in a list of soap opera
Speaker 1: super pupples. The couple even has its own Wikipedia entry.
Speaker 1: Meina Courtland was played by Taylor Miller. If I had
Speaker 1: to name the seven most important women in my life,
Speaker 1: Taylor Miller would be in there. I, I, we, we,
Speaker 1: We rode the crest of this spacetime rave together. John
Speaker 1: Rowland was my mother. You're on this juggernaut and and
Speaker 1: and and when when it ends, you you didn't think
Speaker 1: it was gonna end. You were prepared for it to end.
Speaker 1: I wasn't prepared for it to end. Uh No, No,
Speaker 1: they sent uh she Taylor and I off in the sunset.
Speaker 1: This is what the audience wants anyway. She's she wants
Speaker 1: to leave. She wants to go have a family and
Speaker 1: have a life in Chicago with her her husband, and
Speaker 1: uh so she's leaving. So so we had a brand
Speaker 1: new produce, executive producer, brand new head writer, had no
Speaker 1: personal commitment to the history of the show or the
Speaker 1: character I played or anything. And they've kind of, you
Speaker 1: know what, We'll just let them both go off in
Speaker 1: the sunset. And I was just hammered by it. It's
Speaker 1: going on without me. I found a home and again
Speaker 1: this goes back to the to the military thing. I
Speaker 1: had found a home and I had made myself a
Speaker 1: member of that family in a big way. And it ended.
Speaker 1: And how much how long did you stay after it ended?
Speaker 1: So to notify you, then you're gonna exactly right. So
Speaker 1: they let me know in late January, and I worked
Speaker 1: till September six. It was a long time. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was nasty and and I would love to tell you
Speaker 1: I was strong enough to pick myself up, dust myself off,
Speaker 1: and and get onto the next thing. And I was
Speaker 1: thunderstruck by it. My wife was seven months pregnant with
Speaker 1: our second child. We had just bought the apartment next
Speaker 1: door and joined the two. I met her through a
Speaker 1: blind date. Uh, my friend Michael had had introduced us.
Speaker 1: And what was she doing? And she was working at
Speaker 1: thirty Rock. She worked in NBC Sports for the guy
Speaker 1: that did contracts for everything. And we went to Odeon
Speaker 1: downtown and with with Michael and uh, Marian's cousin Beth.
Speaker 1: Who who's Michael? Okay, here's here's a good twist. Michael Nader,
Speaker 1: Michael Miner, Michael Miner, who's any bells? Okay? I have
Speaker 1: a story for you. Three years ago, my closest friend
Speaker 1: in the world died. Not Mike Miner who lived in
Speaker 1: my building, Mike Mimer, who was on Petticoat Junction. Mike Miner,
Speaker 1: he was I lived in his building. I know that,
Speaker 1: I know that very well. I live very well. Was
Speaker 1: missed myself today. I had no reason to do this, Alec,
Speaker 1: I'm on a very busy schedule right now. This was
Speaker 1: an opportune to say thank you for being a good
Speaker 1: guy to my friend Michael. And some of his darkest days,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you you're being kind to him outside your building,
Speaker 1: in your lobby, would sometimes make his week. God. And
Speaker 1: this is a guy who had quite a career. I mean,
Speaker 1: I said to my wife, I get a picture from
Speaker 1: Pettico Junction and he's the boyfriend, strapping, good looking, super
Speaker 1: handsomely And I turned to my wife and I go,
Speaker 1: that's Mike Minor that we know who lives across that.
Speaker 1: Because he really smoked himself. He died about died of
Speaker 1: a lifetime of bad choices, and he was talked to
Speaker 1: him all the time. Struggle to take care of their health.
Speaker 1: One of the great sense of humors of all times.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you ever children. He was
Speaker 1: him and all my children. He was there for a
Speaker 1: couple of years and uh, Susan Lucci's boyfriend on the show.
Speaker 1: So so Michael and I were on All My Children together,
Speaker 1: became fast friends. And that time, Uh, Beth McCauley, who's
Speaker 1: from Massapequa, Long Island, that's where I'm front. I know that, Uh,
Speaker 1: this is weird. This is weird. So uh, Mike Minor
Speaker 1: and Beth McCauley from Massapequa, UM took us to Odeon.
Speaker 1: Beth head said my cousin's here, uh and said to Michael, um,
Speaker 1: who can we hook her up with? And he said,
Speaker 1: she's a redhead. I'll called Burgman and uh and that's
Speaker 1: how I'm married thirty four years now. Um so anyway,
Speaker 1: we uh we we had a delicious first date. Uh.
Speaker 1: And nice to New York, especially when you're younger and
Speaker 1: a soul new It's nice to be in New York
Speaker 1: with money in your pocket. It was the greatest thing.
Speaker 1: I had a ticket agent. I had somebody I called Frank,
Speaker 1: and I told him I just read about a play
Speaker 1: I want to see, and I would get a monthly
Speaker 1: Bill from Frank and they were at will call. I
Speaker 1: would just go and I had I first moved there
Speaker 1: and I had jobs, and I would you know, I
Speaker 1: would make a little dough. I mean, I just couldn't
Speaker 1: stop going to see everything. Just magical time and uh.
Speaker 1: And I was able to drag Michael into those kind
Speaker 1: of things. So your first marriage ends when while you're
Speaker 1: on the sap, and my my first marriage ends while
Speaker 1: I'm on the soap, while I'm somewhat new on the soap.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh and uh. It was and that in
Speaker 1: itself as a soap, that in itself as a soap,
Speaker 1: and then in itself is I mean, I I don't
Speaker 1: know anybody who has a good divorce story. It was
Speaker 1: just it wasn't It wasn't ugly. You don't I know
Speaker 1: that I died, but but you know, it was a
Speaker 1: terrible time. It was. It was. It was really sad,
Speaker 1: very painful, cutting away the support system you've built around
Speaker 1: yourself for a long time. And I'm very proud of
Speaker 1: the fact that Christine and I did manage to keep
Speaker 1: a friendship all that time. We had some mutual friends
Speaker 1: who we stayed in touch with, and I was literally
Speaker 1: at a wedding with her last summer and uh, and
Speaker 1: I've loved seeing her her success and she's fantastic. I
Speaker 1: saw the closing night of when they did the I
Speaker 1: don't want to see it was the workshop or whatever
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call this early early I think
Speaker 1: was at Playwrights when they playwrights. Yeah, when they did Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: oh my god. She brought the house down. She's so talented.
Speaker 1: But when you how soon after you get divorced, you
Speaker 1: can be married. So I got remarried probably three four
Speaker 1: years later. I married this just amazing woman. Oh god,
Speaker 1: everybody should be loved like I am loved. Yeah, you're lucky.
Speaker 1: When does l A become an idea? L A The
Speaker 1: three things I was not going to do when all
Speaker 1: my children ended. I was not going to replace anybody
Speaker 1: with replacements and kind of work on all my children
Speaker 1: when characters left. I was not going to do another
Speaker 1: soap right away. I'm I'm just I'm doing soup right now.
Speaker 1: And I was not moving to l A. There's no
Speaker 1: what happened. There's no way I moved to l A
Speaker 1: replaced somebody. That's so so, I'm I'm unemployed on the
Speaker 1: shores of Fairfield Beach, where we had a summer house
Speaker 1: we had already paid for. Um that we you know,
Speaker 1: get get away Fairfield, Connecticut. Everyone else was going out
Speaker 1: to Long Island and and Fire Island and and and
Speaker 1: the Hampton's And we went to Fairfield, Connecticut and it
Speaker 1: was swell right in the water. Uh and Uh. I
Speaker 1: was walking up and down that beach and I got
Speaker 1: a call from my agent saying, Um, the Young and
Speaker 1: the Restless just called and want to know how tall
Speaker 1: you do? You want to come out and spend the
Speaker 1: rest of your life. I'm gonna pay you bags of money.
Speaker 1: It was how how tall? They wanted to know? Am I?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, what is what? Don't even call
Speaker 1: them back? So what I didn't know is Young and
Speaker 1: the Restless had lost an actor named uh Terry Lester,
Speaker 1: who had played the character of Jack Abbott for ten years.
Speaker 1: Very pop at her character, he had decided to to
Speaker 1: move on. And uh and the executive producer, was married
Speaker 1: to one of the stars of the show, and the
Speaker 1: two of them were off on their way to Canada
Speaker 1: in a flight and she had all these say uh.
Speaker 1: Melodie Thomas Scott and ed Scott on a flight to Canada.
Speaker 1: She had some of her soap opera magazines with her,
Speaker 1: and I'm on the cover of all of them. I
Speaker 1: was not a likely person to get let go of
Speaker 1: UM and I wasn't. I wasn't honest, always a surprise
Speaker 1: to everybody. So I was on the cover of all
Speaker 1: these magazines. And she turned to ED and they'd already
Speaker 1: tested six guys and and COMI that week came in.
Speaker 1: She was summarily dismissed in the same way some hot
Speaker 1: dogs in Toronto. So so um Meldie Thomas Scott turns
Speaker 1: to her husband and says, that's Jack and uh. He said, okay,
Speaker 1: well find out how Tallly is first. So that's how
Speaker 1: that first call happened. You know, in New York we
Speaker 1: always had a very kind of looking down our nose
Speaker 1: at the Los Angeles soaps. Like in New York you
Speaker 1: went to the theater, and you went to the symphony,
Speaker 1: and you went to the uh you know, restaurants, and
Speaker 1: it was New York and out here everybody was sicking.
Speaker 1: Everybody looked perfect. You've heard all the names because of
Speaker 1: the show, the hung and the breastless and all those
Speaker 1: put down names. When you get out here and you
Speaker 1: start the show. It was night and day. I went
Speaker 1: from standing in the makeup room talking about the show
Speaker 1: last night, and I got here and everyone was off
Speaker 1: in their dressing rooms. There were people that were on
Speaker 1: the same episode that I was on for the first
Speaker 1: two months I was there, and I never met them.
Speaker 1: I never clapped eyes on them, I never saw them
Speaker 1: in the makeup room. Everybody was off in their own world.
Speaker 1: They're probably developing new ideas for something. And you know,
Speaker 1: it was so different, different things. I walked down on
Speaker 1: the set and there were cute cards everywhere, que cards.
Speaker 1: But here's the cool thing. After ten years of watching
Speaker 1: a couple of guys have those roles, the role I've
Speaker 1: got the role on this ship about you, it's about me,
Speaker 1: and it's and this is a mercurial character. One day,
Speaker 1: the nicest brother anybody could ever have. The next day
Speaker 1: a despotic boss and dreadful, manipulative, venal, self centered idiot um.
Speaker 1: The next day, uh, careful kind lover the next day
Speaker 1: it was one way, one of the roles. I got
Speaker 1: one of the roles in daytime and it took off,
Speaker 1: and I was there a year and a half when
Speaker 1: I won my first Emity. You want three or four?
Speaker 1: I won three, nominated, I don't, yeah, nomination nominated for
Speaker 1: a lot of them, and you want a few. And
Speaker 1: when you were there and you're doing the show. How
Speaker 1: what happens to in terms of the culture of living
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles um slowly as the kids grow up
Speaker 1: and I get to coach their basketball teams and we
Speaker 1: get to meet their friends, and we and school starts
Speaker 1: and we get to end. I got to liking it
Speaker 1: more and more. But the first seven years I fought
Speaker 1: this with everything. We kept to our apartment for seven years.
Speaker 1: We kept our apartment on West ninety Street between Central
Speaker 1: Park Western Columbus for the first seven years we were there.
Speaker 1: I lived in the Eldorado for twenty years. Is that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I member? I member. El Dorado is at the end
Speaker 1: of that block. I remember my trinity. You're touring liquors
Speaker 1: right there. You are so there. You you know this
Speaker 1: is I don't want to get into this now, but
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, I'm not sure I'm wanna live
Speaker 1: in New York anymore. Yeah, yeah, I get that. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty hard line. Had I to do this all
Speaker 1: over again. As I said, I fought it tooth and nail.
Speaker 1: The thought that the dragged, kicking and screaming to the
Speaker 1: best thing that ever happened to me. Um, I had
Speaker 1: I to do it over again. The first day I
Speaker 1: would have bought a surfboard, and the second day I
Speaker 1: would have bought a set of golf clubs. And I
Speaker 1: would have embraced with life in southern California. What Rome?
Speaker 1: I was standing there saying, well, this is a cultural
Speaker 1: waste land. Who would live here? As soon as his
Speaker 1: job is over, I'm headed back to New York. I
Speaker 1: fought it with everything, and that's right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Now I've come to embrace the healthy You mean, I
Speaker 1: was one of the great l A haters of all time,
Speaker 1: and you learn to make peace with him. You get
Speaker 1: a break for how much in your contract you have
Speaker 1: off two weeks in December? That's it? Well, you know
Speaker 1: I haven't get out to vacation time. I have outs
Speaker 1: in my contract. But could you do? But the way
Speaker 1: outs work is is they have to cast it so
Speaker 1: far ahead of time. I would do a play. Plays
Speaker 1: are are hard hardest harder to do. It's quite a
Speaker 1: while ago, quite a while ago. So so it would
Speaker 1: be the taking schedule change, because everybody told me, like
Speaker 1: Kims Zimmer would tell me years ago when they reconstituted
Speaker 1: Guiding Light and then you know, they were the I
Speaker 1: remember whether they were going to cancel it or they
Speaker 1: did cancel it or whatever, and they said to them,
Speaker 1: we're gonna shoot multiple episodes. We're gonna we're gonna block shoot.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's what you're doing. That that's the norm now.
Speaker 1: So so we we take five or six shows in
Speaker 1: four days. We only work Tuesday through Friday. Um, and
Speaker 1: not because it gives the actors a break, but because
Speaker 1: it's less expensive and uh. And we pretty much everything's
Speaker 1: in one take, which which is both good and bad. Uh.
Speaker 1: If if I can get time with you to rehearse
Speaker 1: in our dressing rooms, let's suit in one take. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my first take is always my best, always has been
Speaker 1: doing third and four take. That's what. I don't know
Speaker 1: the material. When you when you are doing film and
Speaker 1: somebody's asking you for take nine, I don't know how
Speaker 1: you do that. I go out of my mind. I'd
Speaker 1: start adding words, I'd start you know, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I like I like to do six or eight takes myself,
Speaker 1: just to play with it. But but but for me, it's
Speaker 1: like you know that that I don't like to do
Speaker 1: thirty takes. I mean money, yeah, but but every everything
Speaker 1: is in one take. We we do things, uh it
Speaker 1: up well if you flood will pick it up. But
Speaker 1: but for the most part in scenes with me, um
Speaker 1: and I say this is with as much modesty as
Speaker 1: I can muster. Um. My job is to find you,
Speaker 1: and you and I are going to build this scene together.
Speaker 1: They sometimes they don't have time to direct at all.
Speaker 1: So what you the conversation you and I have about
Speaker 1: what has to happen in this scene is a critical directors.
Speaker 1: They are they and not because they're any less than
Speaker 1: the directors we once had, but because it's going so fast.
Speaker 1: They are in a pressure cooker. They're making camera shots
Speaker 1: work like crazy because we're directing on the fly with
Speaker 1: camera changes and things like that. So so it's up
Speaker 1: to act. So we've run this. You and I know
Speaker 1: this thing inside out before we ever go out there,
Speaker 1: or I or I haven't done my job. When I
Speaker 1: did thirty Rock, they always gave me, like the real
Speaker 1: lengthy speeches I would do the character was windy and
Speaker 1: they haven't got I would hold forth for like a page,
Speaker 1: and I have two pages. And I never memorized the
Speaker 1: night before because I knew they would change it, and
Speaker 1: I knew I'd come in and saying, and we don't
Speaker 1: have that. So I would sit down in the makeup
Speaker 1: chairm memorize and I was a good study. And you
Speaker 1: have to what kills me. People don't get this, they
Speaker 1: say to me. I would have you know quite a
Speaker 1: few people during mic where they say, well, you're very
Speaker 1: good at memorizing. Your aligned you to the soap w
Speaker 1: I said I was on a soap. Yep, I said
Speaker 1: I was on a soap. I had memorize. If it
Speaker 1: was a thirty page script, I was in twenty three
Speaker 1: pages of it. And I said the same thing fifteen
Speaker 1: different ways. Gret I love you, Greta. Please don't leave me, Greta, Please,
Speaker 1: don't you understand Greta. You know those environments, it's intense,
Speaker 1: even before this block shooting. Now when they were in
Speaker 1: the old way, you shot a show a day. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's a pressure cooker. Uh and the peacock men. I'm
Speaker 1: not getting into like your show, but the peacock men,
Speaker 1: men who are the leads, men who drive the show.
Speaker 1: People don't understand that there's a little competition there, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I mean you have to, you have
Speaker 1: to hold your own. But it demands a kind of
Speaker 1: faith in each other that I'm not just protecting my character.
Speaker 1: How about I make you look really good and you
Speaker 1: make me look really good. This is this is the
Speaker 1: Peter Bergman school of doing this. And I can. I
Speaker 1: can beat you down if you if you want to,
Speaker 1: if you want to go toe to toe where you're
Speaker 1: going to embarrass me, or you're going to uh in
Speaker 1: a scene, in a scene and in a scene in
Speaker 1: daytime television. You're not gonna do that to me. No, No,
Speaker 1: that much I can handle. And so when you say,
Speaker 1: you know, the big guys uh protecting their turf, there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of that, but I hate that. Had
Speaker 1: a little bit of that. Now for you one lessing.
Speaker 1: A couple lessons I want to ask you, um, the
Speaker 1: you know, the soap proper culture. The fans, David O'Brien
Speaker 1: said to me, they know you. They watch you every day.
Speaker 1: It's out like nighttime TV, he said, they see you
Speaker 1: every day. And he said a relationship has formed, and
Speaker 1: he's and when they meet you, they're ready for that
Speaker 1: relationship to go to the next level. Yet so so
Speaker 1: so there are different kinds of fame. Uh, someone runs
Speaker 1: into Robert Redford on the street, What do you really say? Um, hey,
Speaker 1: liked liked your your movie with I Love the Natural?
Speaker 1: Um which what are your butch Cassidy And they just say,
Speaker 1: oh my god, um me. They could have a half
Speaker 1: hour conversation with me without ever discussing me or the
Speaker 1: role I play. Half an hour discussion. So there is
Speaker 1: this kind of sense of ownership that we run into
Speaker 1: quite often with this kind of fame that that's in
Speaker 1: my living room every day. Of course, I know I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk. I'm not going to back off. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna talk. Who was Jack married to? Now? Jack is
Speaker 1: not married right now? Yeah, I've lost four wedding rings
Speaker 1: by my characters not being married and being out on
Speaker 1: the set and having the wardrobe guy goes and pointing
Speaker 1: to my ring finger and I take it off and
Speaker 1: I put it in my costume never to see it
Speaker 1: again or something. I can't I if I lost my daughter,
Speaker 1: but I know Jack's not married right now, and and
Speaker 1: Jack is uh. Jack is now de facto the head
Speaker 1: of the Abbot family. And they're really only two big
Speaker 1: families in town, the Newman's in the Abbots. And thirty years,
Speaker 1: thirty years. How do you want Jack to go out?
Speaker 1: Or can you even say? You know? There? I want
Speaker 1: him to be dragged off to prison for putting Victor
Speaker 1: through a wall. There's a character has been his his
Speaker 1: nemesis for the entire time he's been there. And Brandon, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and and it is written in the stars
Speaker 1: that he has to win every battle. Victor Eric Britten's
Speaker 1: character always always, always wins. I want to win one
Speaker 1: major battle and be dragged out screaming at the penitentiary.
Speaker 1: Off to the penitentiary. I guess that's my Jack's last day.
Speaker 1: You're in Rome, and by the time the battle is over,
Speaker 1: you're holding him down and like you keep fear and
Speaker 1: as we close in on his face, he has to
Speaker 1: make the choice do you pull up? But I've just
Speaker 1: been through too much. I'm just gonna hold his face down.
Speaker 1: If over thirty years, hundreds of writers and producers had
Speaker 1: forced you to lose to your arch enemy over and
Speaker 1: over again, well, you might have that kind of fantasy too.
Speaker 1: The kind, gracious and very talented Peter Bergman appears today
Speaker 1: and tomorrow and the day after that at on your
Speaker 1: local CBS station, that's Central. I'm Alec Baldwin, and this
Speaker 1: is here's the thing.