Doug Davidson Happily Marks Four Decades On Y&R
Doug Davidson is the first to admit that he never expected to be marking 40 years in Genoa City. “When I looked at a script six years after I started on Y&R, I was shocked even then that I was still there!” he marvels. “I would hope my younger self would appreciate the tenacity and the discipline it took to remain relevant for four decades.”
Davidson was a young actor with just one feature film and a TV movie under his belt when he read for the role of Paul. The audition, he felt, didn’t go well. “I thought I blew it!” he recalls. “I took my sister and [real-life pal] Rick Springfield [ex-Noah/Eli, GH] and I was really nervous. I thought, ‘I could’ve done so much better.’ ” Convinced he didn’t get the part, “I was all ready to move to New York and do the actor thing when I got a call from the [Y&R] wardrobe lady. It was Friday night, and she asked what I thought I should wear for the show taping on that Monday. I said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ because I thought for sure I didn’t get it. So, that’s how I found out! I was totally shocked.”
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Davidson reports that he was relatively unfamiliar with the genre. “I think the first soap I ever saw was probably old black and white DAYS OF OUR LIVES with my grandmother when I was sick,” he says. “It was only because I would happen to be home when she was watching it. When I was sick in high school, I would check out THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS and GENERAL HOSPITAL.”
On his first day (“I had to stop on the drive over to throw up — that’s how nervous I was!”), he worked with Erica Hope (ex-Nikki), and bristled when he saw his wardrobe. “They wanted me to wear jeans with the dry cleaning pleat down the middle of the leg and I just wanted to wear my 501s with tennis shoes and things that you would see on a 19, 20-year-old,” he chuckles. “That was the beginning of my fight for realism.”
At that time, Y&R was a 30-minute show, shot live to tape, which meant the cameras started rolling and didn’t stop for exactly a half hour. The actors would perform their scenes and keep quiet during the short breaks where commercials were added later. “Once shooting started, we wouldn’t stop for anything so we made sure to be very prepared,” Davidson explains. “We’d arrive in the morning and we’d rehearse all day long until we started taping at 3. It was pretty nerve-wracking! I remember scenes with David Hasselhoff [ex-Snapper] and Wings Hauser [ex-Greg] when they’d shut the door and a picture would slide down the wall and we wouldn’t stop! And it would air like that! After we were finished with one show, we’d sit down for a table read with the next day’s script.”
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As the years passed, Y&R’s co-creator and then-head writer, William J. Bell, kept Paul front and center on the canvas. “Bill’s storytelling and my style were very cohesive,” Davidson shares. “He was the driving force, and I think that the vets know that he knew our language. It was uncanny how he would write things that suited our style, personality … So much of my real life would be mirrored on the show. I mean, freaky! Like, ‘How does he know this?’ It was about human emotions and vulnerability. I got a tweet recently from someone who’s watched this show for the whole time that said I was the first male they saw actually cry on television.”
Though he has seen many castmates opt to leave the soap, Davidson was content to make it home. “It wasn’t easy to make a transition [to prime-time or film] without an abrupt income flow issue and if you look at the history of our show, there have been very few people who have done it,” he points out. “And I was happy! I was a leading story; it was either Paul’s story or a family story. I work with a great group of people, we’re making a good living, and I didn’t have to leave town for work, so I wasn’t spotty in raising a family. It was almost like a normal job — except for those weddings!”
As he looks back on the four decades since he first joined the show, Davidson reflects, “It’s really the longest place I’ve been anywhere, including school or the town I grew up in, longer than I’ve been married, longer than I’ve done any one thing. I’ve spent more time with these people than family members. It’s more than a show. It’s my entire adult life! There isn’t me without Y&R.”
Veteran Affairs
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Davidson opens up about his relationships with his co-stars.
Eric Braeden (Victor): “When Eric arrived, I knew him from a feature film he did called Colossus: The Forbin Project. When I met him I said, ‘I love that movie!’ and that got us off on the right foot. Our relationship was sealed in stone after that. I remember when they used to dress him up like a cowboy because Victor had a ranch, and he brought his luxury automobile into Paul’s gas station because it broke down or something, and we had all this hyperbole. In that scene, he got the giggles but he was wearing this large-brimmed cowboy hat, so he would just dip the hat below his face and I could see that he was giggling, and then I would crack up and of course, I would get in trouble because they couldn’t see him.”
Tracey E. Bregman (Lauren): “You get to know somebody like a relative when you’re working that close. I don’t have to see her for months and it’s like it’s yesterday. It’s almost like I would think of what I’ve heard from the SWAT and SEAL teams where they spend so much time with each other, or football teams where it’s a deeper relationship than one would call a working relationship because it’s so intense. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve had fights — everything! It’s so deep that it’s not surface-y.”
Jeanne Cooper (ex-Katherine): “She just took me under her wing and kept me there. It sounds cliché, but she was like a mom where you really didn’t have to verbalize what was going on, she already knew, and so she’d say just the right thing or put an arm around you or make a joke. She’d throw out advice in sort of an off-handed way, where it wasn’t like, ‘You should do this.’ She knew what motivated people and how they think. She was absolutely fantastic.”
Melody Thomas Scott (Nikki): “There was quite a bit of drama with Erica’s [Hope; ex-Nikki] removal. We had a stage manager who got into a brouhaha with her, and I think that was the beginning of the end. Melody had so much more experience and she pretty much hit the ground running. She integrated into the community without missing a step. It was a little odd for me because I didn’t know what to expect, but she was a well-seasoned professional. I’ll start talking to her about things and we’ll go down memory lane remembering how things used to be. There’s nothing that she forgets, except maybe a line on occasion [laughs]!”
Just The Facts
Birthday: October 24
Born In: Glendale, CA
Relationship Status: Married to Cindy Fisher since May 27, 1984. Although she appeared
as Rebecca on Y&R in 1980 (then later as Dana in 1987), they first met in 1977 while appearing in a Polaroid commercial. “I hit the jackpot — she probably has a different opinion.”
Two For The Show: The Davidsons have two children, daughter Calyssa, 28 (“She got her master’s at the Royal College of Music and she lives in London, where she’s done violin soundtracks for the BBC”), and son Caden, 26 (“He’ll be graduating from the university in Taipei City in Taiwan with a degree in international business and trade”).
Official Y&R Start Date: May 15, 1978
Golden Boy: Copped a Daytime Emmy in 2013 for Outstanding Lead Actor.
Reality Check: “Years ago, I came out of a theater after seeing a beautiful film and I was depressed about where I was in my career and what I was doing. The usher stopped me and said, ‘I’ve gone through some really tough times in my life and your character and your performance has always helped me through the hard times.’ It was almost divine intervention because I was just thinking, ‘What a waste,’ and then I get that kind of compliment. It suddenly made it all worthwhile.”
Did You Know?
He used to save every Y&R script that Paul was in. “In the garage, there was box upon box upon box of scripts, and I finally got rid of them and kept a few memorable ones. I’ve got maybe 100 now.”
Through the years it’s gotten murky, but it was Nikki who gave Paul the STD.
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