It’s one thing to be playing the same characters for a span of forty years, but it’s another when you’re playing characters who are sisters like Ashley (Eileen Davidson) and Traci Abbott (Beth Maitland) on CBS’s The Young and the Restless. The characters made their debut on the long-running daytime drama just days apart from each other in 1982, but are still a major part of the show’s fabric of storytelling to this day. And this Friday’s episode honors the Abbott sisters.
When TV Insider spoke to Davidson and Maitland for the latest Soap Talk feature, they were all smiles and full of memories of working together for the last four decades. “The setup for bringing in this new family, these sisters, was that Ashley was graduating from college and Traci was graduating from boarding school, so our first scenes were Jerry Douglas, playing John [Abbott] coming and picking us up from school and bringing us home,” recalls Maitland.
The episode features clips from past storylines and, admits Davidson, “I think you’re going to see every hair change and every era known to mankind. I’m not a big fan of those flashbacks. I am mortified!” Davidson continues to note that we’ll see the highlights of the big storylines for both characters as well as seeing their first episodes, homages to their romances on the show, and important stories like Ashley’s breast cancer.
TV Guide Magazine cover, August 1987.
As for working together, Davidson and Maitland said it’s not much of a challenge after this much time playing Ashley and Traci. “I have to say, it’s so easy,” Maitland says. “So many things have come and gone over the years, we’ve experienced with each other both on camera and off, that all you have to do is look in the other person’s eyes.”
Watch the full interview above and when you watch the celebratory episode, Davidson (who will also be seen as villainous Kristin DiMera next month on Peacock’s Days of Our Lives: Beyond Salem) and Maitland advise having tissues close by.
The Young and the Restless, Weekdays, CBS