CBS
On November 27, 1989, Peter Bergman made his Young and Restless debut as Jack Abbott, a character already made iconic by Bergman’s predecessor, Terry Lester, who had quit the show after 9 years. As those familiar with Bergman’s casting lore know, the role of Jack became available as the actor was leaving — not by choice –the role of Cliff Warner on All My Children, which he had played since 1979. On the momentous occasion of his 35th Y&R anniversary, the two-time Daytime Emmy-winner chatted with Soap Opera Digest about how he made Jack his own, what this milestone means to him and more.
Soap Opera Digest: What do you think the Peter Bergman of 1989 would have thought if a crystal ball could have shown you a glimpse of this moment, you celebrating 35 years on Young and Restless?
Peter Bergman: I was convinced I could relocate my family [from New York] to Los Angeles, because there seemed to be more work out here, and that I could make this job last for six months. We had [recasts] on All My Children that just didn’t work; there were not too many replacements who lasted long-term. And so I kind of felt that I was going to be one of those, that six months later, they were going to say, “No, let’s just kill the character.” And 35 years later, here I am. It’s just amazing, unbelievable.
Digest: Having been successful for a long time playing a role so different from Jack, did you nurse any doubts about your ability to play a more cunning character?
Bergman: The real truth is, before Cliff Warner, I was often cast as the rich-kid accomplice to the murderer, the spoiled, rich, privileged scion to some business leader. Those were the roles I was cast in a lot in theater. And so making that switch from Cliff to Jack was easier than most people would have assumed. There were parts of it, though, that were challenging because I did have a predecessor [Terry Lester]. I had a guy that was here before me who was well-established and well-liked and so I was surrounded by Jack Abbott experts left and right. Every person here knew more about Jack Abbott than I did, and they had a way they imagined Jack being that I didn’t want to play! I’ll give you an example. By the time Terry Lester left, Brad Carlton was an annoying little pool, man. “Oh, he’s so tiresome.” And, “Jill Abbott is a nuisance, and I’m not going to deal with her” was kind of the whole vibe, the whole energy, from Terry Lester according to everyone around me. And I just didn’t want to play that. I wanted to have Brad be just the most unctuous point of contention in my [on-screen] life, this pool man who ruined my sister’s life. I’ll tell you a story that I told Jess Walton [Jill] 10 years after I started working with her, this story I came up with for Jack Abbott. They had told me Jack and Jill were lost on a mountaintop and ended up sleeping in front of a fire under the same blanket and things got carried away and, you know, he eventually had to face his father about sleeping with his stepmother. I told Jess that what I was playing [when Jack and Jill were in scenes together] was that it was very cold up there on that mountaintop, and Jack is very confident in who he is in the bedroom, but that was not his best night at all. And Jill knows that, and Jack knows that she knows that. So I always played there was a little of, “I’d like just one more shot at this.” And at the same time, being embarrassed to be around her. So she wasn’t a little bother, she was an irritant! And so that’s kind of how I got started there. They fought me a little bit on it and then eventually they embraced it, because I loved working with Jess Walton and I loved working with Don Diamont [ex-Brad, now Bold and Beautiful‘s Bill].
Digest: Do you recall what Jess’s reaction was to you sharing this?
Bergman: Oh, she loved it! She just absolutely loved it. Embraced it the moment I told her. She said, “Oh, that is brilliant.” But honest to God, it was 10 years after I started working with her that I told her that, that [I was playing that Jack felt], “Maybe, just maybe, a situation would arise that I can show her that I’m actually a whole lot better than that.”
Reinventing The Abbott: Bergman early in his Y&R career opposite Melody Thomas Scott as Nikki. It was Thomas Scott who first suggested that the show consider Bergman for the role.
Digest: As you stated, you began the gig with low expectations, expecting that it might only last six months. Can you talk me through when that voice in the back of your mind started to fade?
Bergman: Well, I want to preface this by saying that if America was a little surprised that All My Children was letting go of Cliff Warner, I was gobsmacked. I didn’t see that coming at all. It was a hammer. In your 20s and early 30s, the people you work with are your family, you know? We have lunch together, we vacation together, we do all this stuff. So I basically had a family say, “You know what? We’re going to go on without you.” It was a real hit on my confidence. So the real truth to your simple question is, “When I walked up on that stage to get my first Emmy as Jack Abbott.” That’s when I said, “Yep, this part is mine.” It took that long — a little more than a year-and-a-half. I remember that once I won, I sat with [wife] Mariellen and I said, “No, this isn’t what it takes to be a happy man. This is just an award and it will sit on my shelf and I’m happy about that.” You always think those things are so much bigger than they are, and no, it’s just an award and then you’ve got to get up and go to work the next day. But I said to Mariellen, “That was all so violent, that end of All My Children.” It came out of nowhere, it hit me like a hammer, and this job came about and I went eight days, eight calendar days, without a paycheck from daytime television between the two jobs. I said, “After all that, I don’t know what I’m supposed to learn from this. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, go get another job?” She said, “No, Peter. You were on that show for 10 years. You lost your ability to believe in yourself, to believe that after this job there’s going to be another job, and after that there’s going to be another job. You lost that with the consistency of All My Children. It’s a lesson in believing yourself the next time.” And she was absolutely right. Which is the story of my marriage! She’s just plain smarter than I am.
Digest: There is certainly a tradition of actors going from one show to another and being successful on both, but I don’t know that it has been more successful for anyone else. I think you might be the gold standard!
Bergman: I think I’m a bit of a freak that way! Yeah, I think to get to have this kind of success in a second role is a pretty amazing thing.
Digest: I also think it may have worked to your advantage that the two roles were so different, because you weren’t being asked to do an initiation of Cliff or play something derivative of Cliff.
Bergman: I agree, and I say all the time that for people who were used to Terry Lester, in six months they kind of said, “Okay.” They got into the story and cared less who the guy was. And the All My Children people who came over to see what Cliff was doing over there were so disappointed for so long. “He just used to be so nice! He’s not very nice!” That went on forever, just forever. “Why does he have to be so nasty?”
ABC
No More Mr. Nice Guy: Bergman as AMC’s Cliff opposite then-leading lady Taylor Miller as Nina.
Digest: In daytime, the nice guys like Cliff aren’t typically the juicier parts; they’re the ones that have to react to what the juicier characters are doing!
Bergman: And I’ve spent the last eight or nine years trying to disprove that. When John Abbott died, Jack Abbott, by dint of him being the oldest child, became the head of a family. Jack had to square his life with his having failed to be the man his father was, to having the responsibility of looking out for his sisters in a way he never had before — that the qualities that we saw in Cliff, that if Jack could manage some of those, he could still be a lead character who makes things happen. And I’m starting to get places with it, I’m happy to say. It’s turning into kind of a successful experiment.
Digest: It’s not typical in show business — or, increasingly, in other industries, as well — to stay in the same job for 35 years. How do you stay inspired and engaged this many years in?
Bergman: So, I have this peculiar voice in the company as being the old guy who still gets really jazzed about each thing, you know? I’m able to keep that going because I’m honestly trying to make each scene as good as it can possibly be, and I really let it go when it’s over. I don’t write this; somebody else writers this. But given that material, how good can you make this? And if it’s not great, what can you tell an audience, a person that just happened to tune this in and never saw this show before, about Jack Abbott in this scene? I work with other actors who will tell you that you can’t do a scene with Peter Bergman without running lines with him before we go out there [to film]. He’ll find you, he’ll chase you down, he’ll call you, he’ll knock on your door, he’ll do whatever he has to do. We do not go out there unprepared. We’re going to talk about what needs to happen in the scene and how we’re gonna get there. Luckily, I work with people of the talent of Eileen Davidson [Ashley], Susan Walters [Diane], Beth Maitland [Traci], Michael Mealor [Kyle], people who really care. I come on a little heavy-handed sometimes and they make fun of me, we don’t go out there and go, “Well, let’s wing it. Let’s see what happens.” Not with me.
Digest: This is slightly off-topic, but you know who recently told me what a positive influence your work ethic was on him when he was a newbie? Mr. Michael E. Knight [formerly Tad Martin on AMC and currently Martin Gray on General Hospital].
Bergman: Wow! Well, he’s a lovely man and I love him and I miss him. I just had dinner with him probably a month ago with our friend Bryan Cranston [ex-Douglas Donovan, Loving, who went on to star in prime-time series like Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad]. We both knew Bryan when he was on Loving and we were on All My Children. We all played softball together. We’d lost track of Michael but we tracked him down, so he was definitely the guest of honor. It was a lot of fun, a lot of laughs and a lot of stories.
Digest: But how’s his softball game?
Bergman: Michael’s softball game [laughs]? That wasn’t his strongest sport. But Bryan actually was a very accomplished softball player!
Digest: Okay, back to the subject at hand. You’ve marked other milestone anniversaries with the show before, but here we are at 35. When you think about the opportunities you’ve had over your years at Y&R to collaborate with your castmates, to work so consistently, to forge such strong bonds with your co-workers, can you sum up what this particular milestone means to you?
Bergman: Well, this particular milestone is a reminder that this doesn’t happen to everybody, that there are unique things about working with all of these actors for that many years. If I am on a set with Beth Maitland — I mean, she is as close as a friend can get to being my sister. I want to look out for Beth Maitland the same way Jack wants to look out for Traci, so that is underneath every scene I do with her. I don’t have to kind of reestablish what our relationship is; it’s just so easy to cross a room and wrap my arms around my little sister and tell her I love her, or to be thrown by my little sister throwing common sense in my face. That’s not hard to find at all. After 35 years, so much of that part of the work is so easy, and I’m very grateful for it.
Digest: Is there anything you would like to say directly to the Young and Restless audience? Because this is also the 35th anniversary of that relationship, the relationship between Y&R viewers and you and your Jack Abbott.
Bergman: I’m speaking at [former host of The Hollywood Squares] Peter Marshall’s memorial service; I got to know him through a curious connection with friends. And one of the things Peter Marshall always said was, “We are so lucky. Few people are so lucky.” That’s the way I feel about 35 years and the audience of Young and Restless, that I got to share some of these moments in their lives that were not terribly dissimilar from Jack’s. I got to share with them a marriage falling apart, a relationship starting, the loss of my father, the loss of my mother, the complication of a relationship with your mother. All of those things, I got to share with people who really, really cared about those things, and that’s the opportunity of a lifetime. We are the luckiest people in the world to know what it feels like to touch other people’s lives with our work. I’m one of those people and wow, am I grateful.
Howard Wise/jpistudios.com
We Are Family: Bergman in 2023 with his on-screen kin, (from l.) Michael Mealor (Kyle), Susan Walters (Diane), Eileen Davidson (Ashley) and Beth Maitland (Traci).
CBS
On November 27, 1989, Peter Bergman made his Young and Restless debut as Jack Abbott, a character already made iconic by Bergman’s predecessor, Terry Lester, who had quit the show after 9 years. As those familiar with Bergman’s casting lore know, the role of Jack became available as the actor was leaving — not by choice –the role of Cliff Warner on All My Children, which he had played since 1979. On the momentous occasion of his 35th Y&R anniversary, the two-time Daytime Emmy-winner chatted with Soap Opera Digest about how he made Jack his own, what this milestone means to him and more.
Soap Opera Digest: What do you think the Peter Bergman of 1989 would have thought if a crystal ball could have shown you a glimpse of this moment, you celebrating 35 years on Young and Restless?
Peter Bergman: I was convinced I could relocate my family [from New York] to Los Angeles, because there seemed to be more work out here, and that I could make this job last for six months. We had [recasts] on All My Children that just didn’t work; there were not too many replacements who lasted long-term. And so I kind of felt that I was going to be one of those, that six months later, they were going to say, “No, let’s just kill the character.” And 35 years later, here I am. It’s just amazing, unbelievable.
Digest: Having been successful for a long time playing a role so different from Jack, did you nurse any doubts about your ability to play a more cunning character?
Bergman: The real truth is, before Cliff Warner, I was often cast as the rich-kid accomplice to the murderer, the spoiled, rich, privileged scion to some business leader. Those were the roles I was cast in a lot in theater. And so making that switch from Cliff to Jack was easier than most people would have assumed. There were parts of it, though, that were challenging because I did have a predecessor [Terry Lester]. I had a guy that was here before me who was well-established and well-liked and so I was surrounded by Jack Abbott experts left and right. Every person here knew more about Jack Abbott than I did, and they had a way they imagined Jack being that I didn’t want to play! I’ll give you an example. By the time Terry Lester left, Brad Carlton was an annoying little pool, man. “Oh, he’s so tiresome.” And, “Jill Abbott is a nuisance, and I’m not going to deal with her” was kind of the whole vibe, the whole energy, from Terry Lester according to everyone around me. And I just didn’t want to play that. I wanted to have Brad be just the most unctuous point of contention in my [on-screen] life, this pool man who ruined my sister’s life. I’ll tell you a story that I told Jess Walton [Jill] 10 years after I started working with her, this story I came up with for Jack Abbott. They had told me Jack and Jill were lost on a mountaintop and ended up sleeping in front of a fire under the same blanket and things got carried away and, you know, he eventually had to face his father about sleeping with his stepmother. I told Jess that what I was playing [when Jack and Jill were in scenes together] was that it was very cold up there on that mountaintop, and Jack is very confident in who he is in the bedroom, but that was not his best night at all. And Jill knows that, and Jack knows that she knows that. So I always played there was a little of, “I’d like just one more shot at this.” And at the same time, being embarrassed to be around her. So she wasn’t a little bother, she was an irritant! And so that’s kind of how I got started there. They fought me a little bit on it and then eventually they embraced it, because I loved working with Jess Walton and I loved working with Don Diamont [ex-Brad, now Bold and Beautiful‘s Bill].
Digest: Do you recall what Jess’s reaction was to you sharing this?
Bergman: Oh, she loved it! She just absolutely loved it. Embraced it the moment I told her. She said, “Oh, that is brilliant.” But honest to God, it was 10 years after I started working with her that I told her that, that [I was playing that Jack felt], “Maybe, just maybe, a situation would arise that I can show her that I’m actually a whole lot better than that.”
Reinventing The Abbott: Bergman early in his Y&R career opposite Melody Thomas Scott as Nikki. It was Thomas Scott who first suggested that the show consider Bergman for the role.
Digest: As you stated, you began the gig with low expectations, expecting that it might only last six months. Can you talk me through when that voice in the back of your mind started to fade?
Bergman: Well, I want to preface this by saying that if America was a little surprised that All My Children was letting go of Cliff Warner, I was gobsmacked. I didn’t see that coming at all. It was a hammer. In your 20s and early 30s, the people you work with are your family, you know? We have lunch together, we vacation together, we do all this stuff. So I basically had a family say, “You know what? We’re going to go on without you.” It was a real hit on my confidence. So the real truth to your simple question is, “When I walked up on that stage to get my first Emmy as Jack Abbott.” That’s when I said, “Yep, this part is mine.” It took that long — a little more than a year-and-a-half. I remember that once I won, I sat with [wife] Mariellen and I said, “No, this isn’t what it takes to be a happy man. This is just an award and it will sit on my shelf and I’m happy about that.” You always think those things are so much bigger than they are, and no, it’s just an award and then you’ve got to get up and go to work the next day. But I said to Mariellen, “That was all so violent, that end of All My Children.” It came out of nowhere, it hit me like a hammer, and this job came about and I went eight days, eight calendar days, without a paycheck from daytime television between the two jobs. I said, “After all that, I don’t know what I’m supposed to learn from this. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, go get another job?” She said, “No, Peter. You were on that show for 10 years. You lost your ability to believe in yourself, to believe that after this job there’s going to be another job, and after that there’s going to be another job. You lost that with the consistency of All My Children. It’s a lesson in believing yourself the next time.” And she was absolutely right. Which is the story of my marriage! She’s just plain smarter than I am.
Digest: There is certainly a tradition of actors going from one show to another and being successful on both, but I don’t know that it has been more successful for anyone else. I think you might be the gold standard!
Bergman: I think I’m a bit of a freak that way! Yeah, I think to get to have this kind of success in a second role is a pretty amazing thing.
Digest: I also think it may have worked to your advantage that the two roles were so different, because you weren’t being asked to do an initiation of Cliff or play something derivative of Cliff.
Bergman: I agree, and I say all the time that for people who were used to Terry Lester, in six months they kind of said, “Okay.” They got into the story and cared less who the guy was. And the All My Children people who came over to see what Cliff was doing over there were so disappointed for so long. “He just used to be so nice! He’s not very nice!” That went on forever, just forever. “Why does he have to be so nasty?”
ABC
No More Mr. Nice Guy: Bergman as AMC’s Cliff opposite then-leading lady Taylor Miller as Nina.
Digest: In daytime, the nice guys like Cliff aren’t typically the juicier parts; they’re the ones that have to react to what the juicier characters are doing!
Bergman: And I’ve spent the last eight or nine years trying to disprove that. When John Abbott died, Jack Abbott, by dint of him being the oldest child, became the head of a family. Jack had to square his life with his having failed to be the man his father was, to having the responsibility of looking out for his sisters in a way he never had before — that the qualities that we saw in Cliff, that if Jack could manage some of those, he could still be a lead character who makes things happen. And I’m starting to get places with it, I’m happy to say. It’s turning into kind of a successful experiment.
Digest: It’s not typical in show business — or, increasingly, in other industries, as well — to stay in the same job for 35 years. How do you stay inspired and engaged this many years in?
Bergman: So, I have this peculiar voice in the company as being the old guy who still gets really jazzed about each thing, you know? I’m able to keep that going because I’m honestly trying to make each scene as good as it can possibly be, and I really let it go when it’s over. I don’t write this; somebody else writers this. But given that material, how good can you make this? And if it’s not great, what can you tell an audience, a person that just happened to tune this in and never saw this show before, about Jack Abbott in this scene? I work with other actors who will tell you that you can’t do a scene with Peter Bergman without running lines with him before we go out there [to film]. He’ll find you, he’ll chase you down, he’ll call you, he’ll knock on your door, he’ll do whatever he has to do. We do not go out there unprepared. We’re going to talk about what needs to happen in the scene and how we’re gonna get there. Luckily, I work with people of the talent of Eileen Davidson [Ashley], Susan Walters [Diane], Beth Maitland [Traci], Michael Mealor [Kyle], people who really care. I come on a little heavy-handed sometimes and they make fun of me, we don’t go out there and go, “Well, let’s wing it. Let’s see what happens.” Not with me.
Digest: This is slightly off-topic, but you know who recently told me what a positive influence your work ethic was on him when he was a newbie? Mr. Michael E. Knight [formerly Tad Martin on AMC and currently Martin Gray on General Hospital].
Bergman: Wow! Well, he’s a lovely man and I love him and I miss him. I just had dinner with him probably a month ago with our friend Bryan Cranston [ex-Douglas Donovan, Loving, who went on to star in prime-time series like Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad]. We both knew Bryan when he was on Loving and we were on All My Children. We all played softball together. We’d lost track of Michael but we tracked him down, so he was definitely the guest of honor. It was a lot of fun, a lot of laughs and a lot of stories.
Digest: But how’s his softball game?
Bergman: Michael’s softball game [laughs]? That wasn’t his strongest sport. But Bryan actually was a very accomplished softball player!
Digest: Okay, back to the subject at hand. You’ve marked other milestone anniversaries with the show before, but here we are at 35. When you think about the opportunities you’ve had over your years at Y&R to collaborate with your castmates, to work so consistently, to forge such strong bonds with your co-workers, can you sum up what this particular milestone means to you?
Bergman: Well, this particular milestone is a reminder that this doesn’t happen to everybody, that there are unique things about working with all of these actors for that many years. If I am on a set with Beth Maitland — I mean, she is as close as a friend can get to being my sister. I want to look out for Beth Maitland the same way Jack wants to look out for Traci, so that is underneath every scene I do with her. I don’t have to kind of reestablish what our relationship is; it’s just so easy to cross a room and wrap my arms around my little sister and tell her I love her, or to be thrown by my little sister throwing common sense in my face. That’s not hard to find at all. After 35 years, so much of that part of the work is so easy, and I’m very grateful for it.
Digest: Is there anything you would like to say directly to the Young and Restless audience? Because this is also the 35th anniversary of that relationship, the relationship between Y&R viewers and you and your Jack Abbott.
Bergman: I’m speaking at [former host of The Hollywood Squares] Peter Marshall’s memorial service; I got to know him through a curious connection with friends. And one of the things Peter Marshall always said was, “We are so lucky. Few people are so lucky.” That’s the way I feel about 35 years and the audience of Young and Restless, that I got to share some of these moments in their lives that were not terribly dissimilar from Jack’s. I got to share with them a marriage falling apart, a relationship starting, the loss of my father, the loss of my mother, the complication of a relationship with your mother. All of those things, I got to share with people who really, really cared about those things, and that’s the opportunity of a lifetime. We are the luckiest people in the world to know what it feels like to touch other people’s lives with our work. I’m one of those people and wow, am I grateful.
Howard Wise/jpistudios.com
We Are Family: Bergman in 2023 with his on-screen kin, (from l.) Michael Mealor (Kyle), Susan Walters (Diane), Eileen Davidson (Ashley) and Beth Maitland (Traci).