The veteran soap actress says she ‘learned everything’ from her on-screen parents.
Thirty-five years ago today, on Nov. 16, 1990, 15-year-old Heather Tom, already a working actress with a slew of credits under her belt, began her career in daytime television as Victoria on The Young and the Restless.
She’s remained in the soap opera world and is one of the genre’s most respected and celebrated actresses. Today, Tom plays Katie Logan on The Bold and the Beautiful, and also serves as one of the show’s writers and directors.
Parade sat down with the Daytime Emmy-winner to chat about her journey. She’s acted on soaps produced in both Los Angeles and New York City. However, it all began in the fictional Midwest setting known as Genoa City.
Tom wasn’t cast as just any character on Y&R. She was hired to play Victoria Newman, the rebellious teen daughter of legendary characters Victor Newman and Nikki Reed Newman, played by daytime veterans, Eric Braeden and Melody Thomas Scott.
The lessons that Tom learned from her TV father and mother were instrumental in formulating her career. While Victoria rebelled against her parents, Tom soaked up everything she could from Braeden and Thomas Scott.
“I learned everything from them,” Tom tells Parade. “My first scenes were with Eric. Ed Scott [Y&R’s executive producer at the time, and also Thomas Scott’s husband] had said to me, ‘Be prepared. Know your lines. Watch these people. They know what they’re doing.’”
Tom heeded Scott’s advice and has since emerged as one soaps’ most honored performers. She’s taken home the Daytime Emmy six times in three different categories (Outstanding Younger Actress, Outstanding Supporting Actress, and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series). However, her focus is and always has been on the creative process.
Tom realized quickly that being cast as Victoria, and working with Braeden and Thomas Scott was a performer’s dream. “Working with both of them was so much fun,” she recalls. “It was like playing ‘Double Dutch.’ Eric would rarely say the same line, the same way twice. You had to really listen.”
The soap opera world has evolved over the years from airing live to being shot live on tape to where several versions of a scene might be taped, and then elements from different takes are used to create the final product. Now, in these challenging economic times, production is not dissimilar to when soaps were live, as only one take is shot whenever possible.
“Back then, we’d do eight-page scenes,” Tom recollects. “The scenes were long. We’d do them, and you had to really show up and you had to listen.”
Tom has the greatest of professional respect and personal warmth for Braeden and Thomas Scott, but she points out that “neither one of them suffered fools.”
“Mel was so emotionally available,” Tom says of her ex-TV mom. “I’d just watch her.”
While the work was serious and the storylines included heavy topics, including teen sex, alcoholism, divorce, and more, Tom marveled at how Thomas Scott was able to have some comedic fun in rehearsals with the material. “We’d play ‘Lucy and Ethel’ during rehearsals,” Tom recalls with a smile. “We’d have fun. Mel is so funny. Then, the stage manager would count down, ‘5, 4, 3, 2…’ and she’d have tears [of sadness] streaming down her face. I was like, ‘All right, how do we do this? How does this work?’”
Some actors find it helpful for their process to take a whimsical (but still professional) approach to the material during rehearsals. But when it comes time to shoot it for real, the heavy drama is there. Did Tom find that it could work for her, too?
“I found it does help,” she says. “It shakes up your idea of what the scene is supposed to be about. When you’re moving this quickly, as we do in daytime, or when you’re working ‘incorrectly,’ and you have an idea how you think you’re going to play a scene, then nothing ends up really landing or resonating or being honest.
“Going over the top [in rehearsal] breaks the rhythm of your idea of the scene,” Tom continues. “You’ve thrown all that out the window. “If you play it for comedy in rehearsal, then you can settle down and connect to the moment of the scene. It’s amazing what you can find when you do that. You may say to yourself, ‘Oh, I haven’t heard that line like that before.’”
Tom recalls both Thomas Scott and Braeden being open to the process of discovery, and she followed their lead. “Let’s just jump in and have fun,” the actress says. “I’m going to believe with everything in me that these are my parents and I’m a wealthy, spoiled girl who’s going to get everything that she wants. And that’s what I did.”
After playing a series of storylines that encompassed romantic themes and social issues, Tom exited Y&R in 2003. She moved 3000 miles across the country to New York City, where she joined the cast of One Life to Live as Kelly Cramer.
Over the next four years, Tom earned four Daytime Emmy nominations, ran the New York marathon, and made her Broadway debut in the Mark Madoff play, Prymate.
After she was ready to come back to Los Angeles, Tom ran into Brad Bell, B&B’s executive producer and head writer, at the Daytime Emmys. They talked, which led to Tom being offered the role of Katie Logan, the youngest of the Logan sisters. It’s the role she’s played the longest. Tom has expanded her creative horizons by both writing and directing for the show. She’s also directed for primetime, too, on Dynasty and Good Trouble.
Each soap opera that she’s been on throughout her 35-year career in daytime holds a place in her heart. “Y&R is special because that’s where it all started,” she muses. “That’s where I learned of my love for this genre. I do love it. I love the speed at which we work. I love that you have to make big, giant choices and then, get out of your way. I love that you can play a character for decades and have that history. Characters have lives of their own. They’re living, breathing entities.
“The way I work in general, and this is part of my process,” Tom adds. “I do, ‘What if?’ I use my imagination about all of this stuff. What does this character do all day long? The fun part of being on a soap opera is that you can really dig into that.”
As B&B’s Katie, Tom has tackled everything from battling postpartum depression, undergoing a heart transplant and a kidney transplant, to watching her husband, Bill (Don Diamont), sleep with her sister, Brooke (Katherine Kelly Lang).
Despite Bill’s infidelity, he and Kate have reunited. What’s next for her? The actress/writer/director can’t wait to see what Bell comes up with next for her character. “I will take as much work as they want to throw me,” Tom enthuses. “Brad knows I’m a worker bee.”
