Who was responsible for the tension on the set?

Peter Bergman has been playing Jack Abbott on The Young and the Restless since 1989. But his early days didn’t go smoothly. For Alina Adams’ just-released book, “Super Soap Scenes: A Time Capsule of Daytime Drama’s Greatest Moments,” the three-time Emmy winner recalled what went wrong… and who was to blame for it. Read an excerpt from the book of Bergman’s confession below.

In the Beginning

To me, the most fantastical thing that happens in daytime television—not regularly, but often enough that we’ve all seen it happen on every single daytime show—one day, one actor is on, and the next, there’s another guy on, saying he’s Jack Abbott. That it ever works is extraordinary to me. It is unbelievable to me that the audience ever makes that transition. Surprise, surprise—they sometimes make that transition easier than the actor does.

I get to work at my new job, and everyone—everyone!—knew Jack Abbott better than I did. Every prop guy, every lighting guy, everyone knew Jack Abbott and how he would react. I found it initially pretty threatening. I had to decide to make this (role) my own. Yes, Terry Lester found Don Diamont’s Brad Carlton an annoying pool boy. But I decided I could not stand to be in the same room with Brad Carlton! I disliked him and what he brought to my sisters’ and my family’s life. He was the pool boy! Similarly, by the time he left, Terry Lester’s Jack found Jill (Jess Walton) just a bother. But I decided that Jill was the one person whom Jack kind of met his match with. In a freezing cold cabin, in the winter, as they were thrown together, he… underperformed. I made this up. I made all of this up. But it made Jill somebody Jack did not want to be left alone with.

The Man of the Hour

So now we move on to Victor. Eric [Braeden], at the time, was less than welcoming. He liked Terry Lester. He liked the way Terry Lester played Jack Abbott. The Jack that I played was considerably less cavalier about his relationship with Victor. Eric didn’t know who I was, and he didn’t much care. It put a tension on the set, almost my first week. It was clear this was going to be harder than I thought. That’s how this enmity that I share with Eric began. It wasn’t a giant leap; it wasn’t a huge reach to have some confrontational scenes with this fellow. He clearly didn’t want to even look at me. I couldn’t get eye contact from him. They keep sending me in there (writing that) Jack comes in loaded for bear, the door blows open… and Victor is calm as can be. All of his lines where he’s supposed to be yelling back at me, he’s not yelling at all. He’s sitting there, musing, amused by this crazy man that just walked into his office. Which only made me more pissed off.

Who I Used To Be

Keep in mind, I’d come from ten years on another show. I came from playing one of the nicest guys in America, Cliff Warner on All My Children. I’m a trained actor. I wasn’t a model who was discovered in a drug store. I did my share of acting. I have my share of Shakespearean background. I had some tools to bring with me. Before Cliff Warner, I always played the snotty rich kid. The pompous scion to the family fortune was not new to me. I had done this in the theater, I had done this in other things. But coming to play Jack Abbott in this environment with all these people who’d been here for a long time, who knew exactly what they were doing, one thing I knew: Jack was cocky, very cocky. It’s quite possible that, in my interpretation of Jack, Peter Bergman came off a little cocky to Eric Braeden. So I will take some real responsibility for that tension that was there….

What happened next? Where does Peter and Eric’s relationship stand now? And what did the fans pick as Jack and Victor’s greatest confrontation? Find out in “Super Soap Scenes: A Time Capsule of Daytime Drama’s Greatest Moments!”