Appearing in the Friday, November 10 episode of “The Talk,” which was pre-taped in observation of the Veteran’s Day holiday, “The Young and the Restless” star Eric Braeden (Victor Newman) appeared on the daytime talk show to discuss his recent experience as he battled bladder cancer, and discussed the scene that made him realize he wanted to stay on playing Genoa City’s most powerful businessman.
While sitting down alongside the show’s co-hosts, Braeden shared sound advice for men after he recently won his battle against bladder cancer. When asked how he’s doing now, the Daytime Emmy Award-winner said, “I’m doing well, thank you. Long story short, I ended up at the urologist’s office after I couldn’t pee at all anymore. And that to those of you who are my age, [jokes] 49, I can tell you, it is very painful…I tell all of you guys, have a cystoscopy. Have it examined early on so that you catch it early. So go for it, fight it and [makes fighting fist].
After commenting on his current storyline, in which Victor reveals he’d been faking his suffering from mental deficiencies to get the goods on his children, Adam (Mark Grossman) and Victoria (Amelia Heinle), Braeden reveals that there was a time he had wanted to play a different type of character because he was “tired of playing bad guys.”
Braeden told co-host Amanda Kloots, “I asked [the late] Bill Bell who invented the show, brilliant man, I said Bill, I’m sick and tired of playing bad guys. I played bad guys on ‘Gun Smoke,’ right here on this lot as a matter of fact, on ‘Rat Patrol,’ ‘F.B.I.,’ ‘Hawaii Five-0.’ And I was empty, I couldn’t play bad guys anymore. I said it’s too dehumanizing.
“I said, can we imbue this character with a background that explains why he is as bad as he is…he wrote the storyline… Then when I did that scene with Dorothy McGuire, she played my mother who I had not seen in over 30 years. She had left me at an orphanage at the age of seven. She was destitute, no money. That rang a bell with a lot of people in the audience and with me. And once I did that scene, I said, ‘I’m going to stay.’ I had no idea how I was going to do it.”
After Braeden’s confession, “The Talk” aired a brief but powerful clip from the episode featuring Victor meeting his mother, Cora Miller (McGuire), for the first time. In the clip, Victor tells her, “You are my mother… I’ve been waiting for you for years, and you never looked back!”
Braeden confesses he did the scene in one take after co-host Sheryl Underwood noted how real his tears looked to viewers.
Watch clips from Braeden’s appearance on “The Talk” below.