The Young and the Restless premiered in 1973 in the US and is now one of the longest and most popular shows in American TV history. However, if everyone knows this legendary daytime soap opera, what about its history and behind-the-scene secrets? Focus on six fun facts that will make you see this show differently.
If The Young and the Restless premiered in 1973 on CBS in the United States, French fans would have to wait until 1989 to discover the soap opera on TF1. However, rather than starting with the first episode, the French TV network began to broadcast the soap from episode 3263. This choice was made so that there wouldn't be a huge gap between the American and the French broadcast. This means that more than 3000 episodes of The Young and the Restless were never shown on French television to this day.
Both Victor Newman and John Abbott, who are very popular characters in The Young and the Restless, were not introduced until later on the show. In fact, at the very beginning, the series was centered around Leslie and Lorie Brooks as well as Jill Foster and their families, before the Newman and Abbott clans took the lead. Indeed, Victor Newman and John Abbott were only introduced on The Young and the Restless in 1980, that is to say seven years after the show premiered.
The late Jeanne Cooper, who played Katherine Chancellor between 1973 and 2013 in The Young and the Restless, lived a groundbreaking moment of American TV history on March 28th 1984. During an episode of the show, her character gets a face-lift on screen, a scene larger than life since the actress really got this cosmetic surgery while being filmed by the camera crew. While being interviewed on the American talk-show The Talk in 2012, Jeanne Cooper revealed that this storyline for her character was her idea, since she was about to undergo plastic surgery in real life.
Did you know that another title was considered before The Young and the Restless was chosen? The creators of the show, William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell, initially called it The Innocent Years before changing their minds, judging that the American youth had lost its innocence. Therefore they went for The Young and the Restless.
The soap opera The Young and the Restless really evolved over the years. When the show first aired in 1973, its episodes lasted 30 minutes. However, due to the success of the series, CBS asked William J. Bell to lengthen the episode from 30 minutes to a full hour, in 1980. This decision has not been without consequences for The Young and the Restless as the co-creator tells in the book Worlds Without End : The Art And History Of The Soap Opera. Indeed, William J. Bell recounts how the ratings dropped for a few years while several actors decided to leave the show because of this particular change.
In The Young and the Restless, Victoria Newman and Billy Abbott were originally played by Heather and David Tom, who are brother and sister in real life. The actress was Victor Newman’s daughter from 1990 to 2003 before being recast with Amelia Heinte. As for John Abbott’s son, who was played by David Tom from 1999 to 2002, this role was also recast multiple times before Tom briefly reprised his role in 2014. However, when Victoria and Billy started dating on the show, they were no longer played by their original performers.
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