The 50th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards will be held on Friday, Dec. 15, with the ceremony airing live on CBS starting at 9 p.m. ET. Soap Opera Digest chatted with the nominees to get the scoop on how they found out, what episodes they submitted, and more as we count down to daytime’s biggest night!
Outstanding Guest Performer
Robert Newman (ex-Ashland, THE YOUNG & THE RESTLESS)
Howard Wise/jpistudios.com
This is your first nomination since 2006, when you were playing Josh on GUIDING LIGHT. Did you ever think you’d find yourself in this position again? “No. It’s not exactly something I was expecting at this time!”
How did you get the good news? “I was on the golf course, which won’t be a surprise to most people. The publicist from Y&R had tried to call and I didn’t pick up because I was on the course, but then he texted me to say, ‘Hey, I have some good news for you regarding the Emmys,’ which pretty much said it all.”
What was your reaction? “This isn’t the kind of thing that I get really excited and thrilled about. It’s just sort of my own self-defense mechanism, probably, that kicks in in some weird way where I just go, ‘Oh, that’s great, terrific,’ but I don’t tend to get over-excited about things like this. I’ve been down this road a couple of times, so I kind of know the drill. But when the nominations came out, I got all kinds of congratulatory things all day long from the folks at Y&R and the folks at CBS, and a lot of the actors on the show texted me. That part of it feels really nice, and of course it’s lovely just to be acknowledged and recognized by your peers. That’s a really nice thing. I’ve been on the judging side 100 times, and when you’re sifting through all of these submissions, it’s really cool when you see one or two where you go, ‘Oh, wow. That was really something.’ And it’s nice to think that my fellow actors took a look at my work and said, ‘I’ll give that one a high mark. That was nice work.’ That means something; whether I win or don’t win doesn’t really matter.”
Did you actively participate in crafting your submission? “Oh, yeah. [Y&R’s publicist] had sent me a list of probably eight or 10 shows that had certain bits and pieces that we thought might work, but I was pretty sure that some of the scenes I had with Amelia [Heinle, Victoria] in my last episode would probably be part of it, and then some earlier scenes about the ‘I have cancer’ kind of thing. Those scenes I remembered pretty well. And then I threw in a couple of smallr things with Adam, because I just like that relationship between the two characters and I wanted something a bit softer in there, that was maybe even borderline a little comedic. We put together a nice tape. We kept it short. I’ve judged enough times to know that we judges prefer it short!”
When you’re at the ceremony as a nominee, do you get nervous during the wait for your category to come up? “Either of the times I was nominated, I didn’t feel like I was waiting for something, or sitting on pins and needles or anything like that. What I remember is that before the broadcast even started, I kind of wandered around and tracked down the other nominees and made sure to touch base with each nominee in my category to say, ‘Hey, how are you doing? Have a great night! Good luck to you!’ I’ve probably been more nervous about being a presenter than I’ve been about being nominated. In the cases of both of my previous nominations, one was a loss to Tony Geary [ex-Luke, GH], who I have tremendous respect for, and the other one was to Peter, who’s a friend and who I also have enormous respect for. So I remember saying to Peter, ‘I’d rather to lose to somebody I like rather than somebody I don’t know!’ ”
What are you looking forward to about Emmy night? “Any time I go to something like this, it’s about seeing and reconnecting with some of the people that I’ve developed relationships with. I’m looking forward to seeing the people I developed closer relationships with while I was at Y&R, and friends that I’ve known forever, like Peter Bergman [Jack], and it’ll be nice to see friends from other shows, as well.”
Have you given any thought to what it might be like trying to get a Daytime Emmy through security on your way back to the East Coast? “I hadn’t thought about that, and that’s a great question! I don’t know how they would respond to that. I’m guessing it would go in my checked bag [laughs].”
If you were to win, where would you keep the statuette? “You know, I always loved the story of Justin Deas [ex-Buzz, GL et al], who kind of had all of them shoved up into his attic. I remember Kim [Zimmer, ex-Reva, GL] describing seeing them up there once and it looked like the scene from Toy Story with all the misfit toys kind of just shoved into a corner somewhere. I don’t really know what I would do with it, but knowing my own personality, I’m pretty sure it would not be a centerpiece in the living room or anything like that! It’d probably sit on a shelf in my office.”
