into acting or in the Academy.’”
For openness and drive, Cooper suggests, “Julia Roberts” for a younger version of Cooper.
With eight decades behind her, nothing shocks Cooper. What’s the biggest achievement she’s seen in the world to date?
“I have to say one of the most exciting changes was the space program. I was fortunate enough to see the first landing at Denver Air Force Base. Space men traveling to the Moon in discovery of other life or water,” she says, obviously still in awe. “It confirmed there is a belief that there are other people out there other than us. I don’t believe God created the world and that on the seventh day he rested. I’m sure he was busy that day, too! I think we’re a lab test of sorts thanks to a higher being. That higher power is currently looking down on earth saying, ‘Boy, we fucked up again, didn’t we?’”
Is the world a better place now than in Cooper’s early days?
“The earth is a violent and exciting place. Man should’ve taken his rightful place in this world but we didn’t: we thought we were bigger and supremer than the earth itself. And we are not,” she points out passionately. “The weather can destroy more in a second then what it takes us years to develop. A tornado can destroy a city in a snap of a finger. We have to develop bombs for over years and years to do the same damage. As men drove natural things out of its habitat, man is ironically driving itself out of its own domain into destruction.”
As for the future of the world, Cooper sighs, “Maybe it’s too late for us. Unless we do some major preventive damage.”
But, then again, as Cooper reminds me, “Katherine and I are survivors — and so are human beings. We’ll see.”
When it comes to preventive damage, head writer Josh Griffith and executive producer Jill Farren Phelps will no doubt have an easier time over at Y&R.
Uncensored Editorial
THE EMPEROR WEARS NO CLOTHES
Inside The Fall Of Eric Braeden (And Victor Newman)
“Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.”
—Colin Powell
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
—Charles Darwin
Over the years, Eric Braeden has often repeated the above quote from Charles Darwin in our interviews — ironic considering this is a man who still believes it’s 1989.
“Victor Newman always has the last laugh,” narrated Katherine Chancellor on the penultimate 10, 000th episode of Y&R last week.
That may be true (for now), but for his portrayer, Eric Braeden, laughs are few and far between today.
By now everyone has seen the heavy-handed slurpfest devoted to Braeden and The Great Victor Newman in honour of the sudser’s latest milestone.
I hope both Braeden and The New Man, A.K.A. The Old Bastard, enjoyed it while it lasted because that will be the last time the ensemble show will be written around one actor and one character ever again.
It’s no secret that Maria Arena Bell catered to Braeden’s out-of-control, toxic and irrelevant ego during her tenure as the show’s executive producer and head writer. Just look at the ratings.
It is believed, according to several sources, that Bill Bell thought he was a more realistic and earnest version of Victor Newman, a theory which has recently gained traction in recent books, Jeanne Cooper’s NOT YOUNG, STILL RESTLESS and THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS LIFE OF WILLIAM J. BELL.
It’s why the tycoon is always the “victor” at the end of every battle. (Allegedly, Maria, not to be outdone, would fashion Genevieve after herself.) While Victor was an extreme caricature, Bell believed Victor and himself shared a lot in common: creating empires out of nothing with the intent of grooming his children to take over his legacy one day. In fact, friends of Bill Bell have told me that every Christmas, Bell would toast Victor Newman for his family’s fortune and success, a tradition not lost on his children and their respective spouses. Which is why, in large part, the next generation of Bells has been resistant and fearful to write Victor Newman as a real human as opposed to a Biblical figure. (However, B&B’s Brad Bell, is all too happy to move into the future by focusing his show’s narrative on the next generation.)
Ironically, as Y&R was unspooling its corny, contrived and unoriginal tribute to Victor Newman, Braeden, who is still reportedly reeling after CBS/Sony fired Maria Arena Bell, continued his public meltdown by unraveling on Twitter.
Memo to whomever suggested that the reactive and temper prone actor join Twitter needs to be bitch slapped across the face because they were doing no one any favours, most of all Braeden.
While using social media can be useful as a first line of defense against a dismissal, as evident when fans saved Daniel Goddard’s job (another story I broke), Braeden and Twitter are not a match made in Heaven. But it has sure been entertaining.
Within 24 hours of Braeden joining Twitter, the Emmy winner not only attacked yours truly but also his talented and popular co-star Michael Muhney.
I’m in good company. Last month, Braeden simultaneously went after Sharon Case and myself. I guess I’m a celebrity now, too.
Referring to me, Braeden asked why I was so “mean” considering how nice the entire cast and crew of Y&R has been to me over the years.
Rewind: Braeden has been angry with me ever since I printed he was in contract negotiations this past summer. His camp denied it. Last week, Braeden confirmed to EW.com that he has re-signed with the sudser for multiple years.
How was reporting that Braeden was embroiled in contract negotiations “mean?” Especially when it was true? In my June report, I had detailed story information from Victor’s disappearance right up until last week’s return-from-the-dead plot madness. Clearly, my sources were once again accurate — even if I received the “soap opera intelligence” before Braeden was aware of what was coming down the pike.
It’s a little surreal for me to be dealing with Braeden’s ire because, when I exclusively broke two years ago that Braeden quit after refusing to take a pay cut, the actor himself called me personally to thank me for my “excellent, accurate reporting.” Well, my sources back then were the same insiders that relayed what was happening with Braeden this summer.
If he had read my story, and I doubt he has, he’d know I was trying to alert the troops to help him out considering I knew CBS/Sony wouldn’t be too depressed if Braeden walked again this time.
Any editorializing in my new story did not come from me but my sources.
For example, Hans Jörg Gudegast may have taken issue with my sources commenting that dealing with Eric is always “tumultuous,” and the popular theory amongst the cast and crew that he was trying to appear as a team player when he surprised many by attending the DAYTIME EMMY AWARDS for the first time in years after swearing them off to me in several interviews.
I did not call Braeden a bad actor. Nor did I ask Braeden to be fired. I did not even call for Victor to be thrown on the backburner where he deserves to be. Now that would’ve been mean.
For ten years, I have given Eric several high-profile features in my country’s number-one selling magazine, HELLO! CANADA (which also included a ten-page exclusively shot at-home feature with his family), ZOOMER Magazine (Canada’s AARP magazine), and flew him up first class to Toronto for an appearance on CTV’s hit talk show THE MARILYN DENIS SHOW, which I head wrote at the time.
I bent over backwards dealing with his relentless and punishing ego and his demands during that trip to Toronto.
He has no right to call me mean — especially considering the stories I’ve heard from several unrelated sources about his “unacceptable bullying” on set.
In fact, this is a man, when he doesn’t get his way, suggest insiders, gets people fired. Several actresses can attest to that fact.
This is a man who, during a story disagreement, head bunted Peter Bergman, one of the nicest, swe
etest men in daytime TV, causing his teeth to pop up in a sea of blood. I mean, the police were even called in!
Sorry, but I will not be judged by a violent, reactive man.
As for his passive-aggressive and cowardly attack on Michael Muhney, whom he did not mention by name, Braeden further proved that there are few synapses not firing on all cylinders in his brain.
To any rational person, Muhney was simply criticizing the writing — not Eric Braeden’s reign on the rusting Y&R throne. Muhney was merely conveying what a lot of us felt watching those awkward episodes: that it was simply unbelievable that an entire town used to Victor Newman’s presumed deaths would easily accept the Phoenix’s recent trip to Hell — and insulting to the viewers and actors.
But maybe Eric, who more than likely worked closely with Maria on this Victor Newman slurpfest, was outing himself as the architect of his own ego worship.
Furthermore, and quite hypocritically, it was only a short month ago when Braeden attacked his other co-star Sharon Case for criticizing him on Twitter saying “you don’t do that to your co-stars; it’s unprofessional.”
Pot. Kettle. Black.
And it