Young and Restless’s Roger Howarth Was ‘Genuinely Nervous’ To Work With Eric Braeden (Excl)
Over the course of his decades-long soap opera career, Roger Howarth (Matt/Mitch, Young and Restless) has worked with a slew of A-list, Daytime Emmy-winning heavy hitters, from Erika Slezak (One Life to Live‘s Viki Lord, the sister of his character, Todd) to Maura West (they intersected on both As The World Turns, where they played Carly and Paul, and on GH, where West plays Ava and Howarth played Todd, then Franco, then Austin) to Anthony Geary (General Hospital‘s Luke, with whom he tussled as both Todd and Franco). A Daytime Emmy winner himself, Howarth is also well-reputed in the genre. Still, the actor admits to Soap Opera Digest, he was intimidated at the prospect of crossing paths with Eric Braeden, who plays the great Victor Newman on Y&R.
Legend Has It
Howarth first met Braeden backstage at the studio when he began working there this fall, weeks before they shot their first on-screen encounter as Matt and Victor. “I was nervous to meet him,” says Howarth. “I was genuinely nervous! He’s such an imposing, impressive human being.”
The actor quickly discovered that there was nothing for him to be anxious about. “He could not possibly have been more welcoming to me,” Howarth recalls. “I really enjoyed meeting him. It was an absolute pleasure.” As was sharing the stage with him for their first scenes, which aired on the Wednesday, December 3 episode. “He’s a pretty terrific actor! Howarth enthuses. “It was a lot of fun to go toe to toe with him.”
While Braeden’s stature in the soap world is well known, it was actually an interest other than acting that gave the two stars common ground. Howarth is a massive soccer fan who enjoys both watching the sport (he once told Soaps In Depth that he watched “between 20 and 30” hours of games a week, and he’s a particularly diehard fan of Arsenal) and playing it; while he never played professionally, he traveled internationally with the Puma Shoes U.S. National Soccer Team before his acting career took off.
Meanwhile, before he became one of the legends of daytime television, Braeden was a champion soccer player, scoring the winning goal at te 1973 National Challenge Cup as a fullback for the Macabi Los Angeles soccer club — which initially made Howarth even more intimidated! “Look, the guy’s got his own Wikipedia page about his involvement in American soccer,” Howarth points out. “He’s kind of soccer royalty. Being part of the soccer community here in L.A. myself, somebody has asked me about [whether I knew of him] and I’d looked him on the Internet years ago.”
That ended up being quite the ice-breaker! “We had something to chat about because we have something that we both love in common,” Howarth smiles.
The actors should get more opportunities to discuss their mutual hobby, because on air, Howarth’s alter ego is still insisting to Victor that he’s not Mitch Bacall, not Matt Clark, not that Victor’s buying it — and something tells us Victor will stay very much in the mix until he’s confident that his loved ones are safe from Matt’s diabolical plans.
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