Before auditioning for the role of Phyllis Summers on The Young and the Restless 30 years ago, Michelle Stafford was thinking of putting acting on the back burner.
“I had a succession of getting close to jobs and then not getting them,” she explains. “A couple of weeks prior to the Young and Restless audition, I had created a flower business with a friend of mine because things weren’t going well for me as an actor. We started to do big gigs, so I wasn’t going to give up on acting, but I was considering putting my attention elsewhere.”
One of those memorable gigs she didn’t get was for a soap on the East Coast. “I got very close to a role on One Life to Live and the feedback that came back as to why I didn’t get it is because they wanted to go with someone who was pretty,” she recalls. “Those were the exact words. I said, ‘Oh, you mean prettier than me?’ And my agent said, ‘No, they really just want someone pretty.’ So, I always just felt like I wasn’t pretty enough for daytime.”
Though Stafford wasn’t feeling positive after her Y&R audition — “I got in the elevator and cried,” she relays — she did get feedback quickly. “If you do an audition and an hour later you get a call from your agent, it’s a good sign,” she explains. “There were no cell phones. This was the time of pagers, so I got a page from my agent and ran to a pay phone to call him back. He said, ‘You got the job. They love you. You start in two days.’ I couldn’t believe it. It was really nice.”
CBS / Courtesy Everett Collection
Stafford credits Lauralee Bell (Christine Blair) and Michael Damian (Danny Romalotti) with helping her find her way in Genoa City. “Lauralee and Michael were extraordinary,” she praises. “And Doug [Davidson, Paul Williams], too, but I didn’t work with him as much. I worked with Michael right away, and I’m telling you, I will love him forever because he couldn’t have been lovelier or more charming. I mean, we all know Michael Damian is the loveliest, but that was just a saving grace for me because sometimes you go into these new jobs and you don’t always get that. It goes such a long way to just be kind to somebody. And they were both incredible. Lauralee? We all say this, but she had every normal reason to not be that way. This is the boss’s daughter, right? [Bell’s father, William J. Bell was the show’s co-creator and head writer.] But she was amazing. I’m so lucky that I worked with the two of them. It was a dream for me.”
Shortly after her debut, Stafford got a sense the role was catching on. “I think it was when [former TV Guide Magazine soap columnist] Michael Logan chose to write an article about me,” she reflects. “It is a very respected publication, and it has been all these years, and he didn’t want to do a little box on me. He wanted to do a whole article. I think the article said something like, ‘We’re not even done with the year, and I’ve chosen my favorite character of 1994.’ That was in, I think, November, and I started airing in October. At the time, I remember the show publicist saying, ‘This is a big deal that he’s asking to do an interview with you.’”
Despite the positive feedback, Stafford still hadn’t given up her side gig. “I didn’t know how long this job would last, so I was selling Rollerblades on the weekends at swap meets,” she shares. “I would put them on and rollerblade around in my short shorts to get people’s attention to come buy Rollerblades. I was still doing this through December of that year and one woman came up to me and said, ‘Oh, you look like a character on my soap opera,’ and I said, ‘Oh, it is me,’ and she went, ‘Yeah, sure.’ ”
Because of her scheming ways, Phyllis wasn’t the most popular character with the fans. “They were hating me!” Stafford recalls with a laugh. “I was in Louisiana at the Mardi Gras parade in 1995. You’re on the car and you’re waving to people and throwing beads, and they had security around me. Everybody kept saying, ‘Get away from Danny! Get away from Danny,’ and one of the security guys said, ‘I don’t know who this Danny guy is, but apparently you should not be around him.’”
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Stafford didn’t mind the backlash. “I loved it,” she muses. “You know, I never took offense at all. That was the job and she was hateful. This is before social media. I didn’t care what people said. I still don’t.”
In time, Stafford found Phyllis’ softer edges. “I really felt like she was so broken and there was so much pathos there,” she explains. “I think that Bill [Bell] saw that and started writing more to that as time went on. And I think the secret to the longevity of the character is that it became less of a caricature and more of a character that you could relate to or could have empathy for.”
On October 18, the show will mark the 30th anniversary of Stafford’s debut with a flashback-filled episode dedicated to Phyllis. In it, Phyllis will rally her family together as evidence is mounting against son Daniel for Heather’s death and reflect on her past relationships and experiences in Genoa City. “One of [the flashbacks] is my favorite scene I’ve ever shot with Peter [Bergman, Jack Abbott],” she previews. “It perfectly communicates the demise of the Jack/Phyllis relationship, and I was so excited that that is in it. I love the shows where we see that she messed up and she’s trying to overcome it.”
Monty Brinton / CBS
As she looks back on what getting the Y&R job meant to her, Stafford notes, “It completely changed my life because I had a paycheck. Going to the grocery store and being able to buy whatever I wanted was huge for me. Being able to buy the nice peanut butter, not the generic one, was phenomenal.”
Thirty years later, it’s her connection to the cast and crew that is especially meaningful. “I’ve spent more time with those guys than I have my actual family,” Stafford points out. “I’m stopping myself from crying right now, but people get sick or lose a family member and we’re supporting each other and we’re there for each other. It’s meant a lot. These people are very, very important to me and always will be.”
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