In the world of daytime soap operas, a few things are certain: 1) Evil twins will surface at the most inopportune time. 2) Babies will get switched a birth. 3) You don’t slap Victor Newman, The Young and the Restless’s moustached self-made billionaire.
The first two are non-negotiable, but No. 3 isn’t necessarily set in stone — at least it wasn’t for Heather Tom, who played Victor’s firstborn, Victoria Newman, on The Young and the Restless from 1990 to 2003.
Tom had already been on the show for more than a decade when she delivered the slap heard around the soap world to her TV dad, played by Eric Braeden.
Heather Tom as ‘The Young and the Restless’ heroine Victoria Newman in 1992.
“No one gets to slap Victor Newman,” Tom, 49, tells PEOPLE when reminded of the memorable scene. “And so it was a big deal, and I was scared. I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I was scared, literally.”
“I knew that this was coming up,” she adds. “I was like, ‘Well, I don’t really know [where] this thing’s going to go afterwards, so I guess we’re just going to jump in.’ But yeah, it played very well. It’s something that people definitely remember, but I do vividly remember shooting that. And yeah, it was a thing.”
In the scene, which aired in the early 2000s, Victoria confronts Victor after learning that he has run her boyfriend Diego Guittierez out of their fictional hometown of Genoa City.
Although Victor and Victoria’s relationship sometimes turned stormy over the years, Tom has fond memories of sharing scenes with Braeden during her time on Y&R.
Eric Breaden and Heather Tom in 2023.
“I loved working with Eric so much because you kind of never know,” Tom says. “You never really knew where the scene was going to go. And it was so exciting, and it was such a great learning experience because you really, really, really had to listen and be on your toes and watch for or follow along. It’s an amazing acting exercise.”
Tom won two Daytime Emmys for her work on Y&R. Since 2007, she’s been playing Katie Logan on Y&R’s sister soap, The Bold and the Beautiful, and picked up four more Emmys along the way.
In recent years, she’s appeared onscreen less regularly while focusing more on directing and writing. To date, she has directed 36 episodes on B&B and written six.
And with the March 27 episode, Tom hit an impressive milestone, becoming the first woman to write, direct and act in the same episode of a daytime show. In doing so, she joined an exclusive club of women across daytime and primetime that includes Amy Poehler and Gillian Anderson.
“It was logistically challenging,” she told a week before the episode aired.
But, she added, “I’m really excited about it.”
