Veteran Young and the Restless fans recognized the man giving Audra Charles the scoop on yesterday’s episode. It was Brad Sanders playing TV newsmagazine reporter Clarence. He reported some dish on Tucker McCall’s musician being involved in a sex scandal! Before the holiday break, Soap Hub got Sanders to spill all the tea on his guest spot and the glory days of promoting CBS Daytime.
Brad Sanders: Clarence and Soap Opera Scoop
“They wove me back in a very clever and exciting way,” says Sanders, referring to how this version of Clarence provided Audra (Zuleyka Silver) with some info on Tucker (Trevor St. John) in a way that would have impressed gossipmonger Leanna Love (Barbara Crampton).
Sanders was the voice and often the face of CBS Daytime when it came to promoting the show’s No. 1 daytime lineup when there were four soaps — Y&R, Bold and the Beautiful, As the World Turns, and Guiding Light — populating the network’s lineup.
He also did the “Who Gets the Gold?” campaign one year at the Daytime Emmys. Another year, Daytime Emmy Awards broadcast producers had Sanders appear throughout the program as Clarence was sought after by actors (in-character) wanting to get envelopes that contained names of winners away from him. “I got a piece of that on my Instagram page,” says Sanders.
In 1990, Sanders appeared in the “CBS Soap Central” on-air campaign where the network provided a paid call-in number enabling fans to receive updates and scoop on their favorite shows. “Jack Forrestel [B&B’s production designer] built that,” Sanders recalls of the newsroom-type set where information on the CBS soaps was being processed.
“I had so much fun [doing all that] with Susan Banks [former director of on-air promos, CBS; now, a Y&R writer] and her crew — Stacey Singleton [now a voiceover artist], Judy Huern, and Paula Cwikly [who also went on to write for soaps],” Sanders recalls. “They were all really enthusiastic about their work and about Clarence. I’d been on the radio and was helping generate audiences. They came up with such brilliant ideas and different scenarios. There was a mystery lady one year who was trying to get information on the show. All you’d see was her glove [or] her hat.”
Sanders provided the ominous voiceover when Y&R told the Jill/John/Mamie storyline back in the mid-1990s, a dynamic that plays out today as Jill (Jess Walton) and Mamie (Veronica Redd) continue to spar and toss shade at one another.
This wasn’t Sanders’s first appearance on Y&R. “I was a DJ for the prom that Malcolm Winters [Shemar Moore] recreated for Alex [Alexia Robinson],” he recalls of a guest gig from the early 2000s. “That was such a beautiful scene.”
The Georgia-based actor was able to shoot his scene for Y&R this time around via remote. “I love the people here, the weather is nice and there’s a lot of work coming out of here,” says Sanders, who played Michael B. Jordan’s (ex-Reggie, All My Children) father in Just Mercy. “He’s a nice guy and he was really great work with,” Sanders says. Additionally, Sanders has had roles in Black Lightning, The Wonder Years, and The Underground Railroad.
Sanders says that he’s hooked especially on one of Y&R’s big stories now involving Aunt Jordan (Colleen Zenk) and her vendetta against the Newman clan. About Claire (Hayley Erin) being baby Eve and returning after all these years, Sanders, speaking of AMC, quips, “Unlike Bobby Martin who went up to the attic to get his skis, [Claire] came back!”
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