Veteran fans of Young and the Restless actress remember seeing Tricia Cast delivering frequent dynamite performances in the 1980s and 1990s as Nina Webster Chancellor McNeil endured peril after peril in Genoa City. Now, Cast talks to Soap Hub about the material she gets to play in light of Nina’s son Chance being shot!
Tricia Cast: Mothers and Sons
Cast has been popping up on Y&R on and off for some time now as Nina. The character nearly ripping into Abby (Melissa Ordway) back in March over her treatment of Nina’s son Chance (Conner Floyd) was an appetizer to the meaty material Cast is getting to sink her teeth into now.
“It was nice,” Cast tells Soap Hub about this most recent visit to Genoa City in which Nina got to reminisce with pal Christine (Lauralee Bell) and rushed to the bedside of her injured son. “It was fun to do. I like working with Conner. He’s lovely. It was nice to play a story. I’m grateful for the work and it was a very good script.”
Worth the Wait
While Nina and Chance didn’t cross paths in March at the anniversary show, the two performers did meet about a year ago at Y&R’s holiday party. “I had done some shows around that time,” she recalls. “So that was about a year ago. Luckily, we had a nice connection. I think we fell into the mother/son dynamic very easily.”
Soaps are shot at a lightning pace these days so Cast says she made sure she was even more prepared than usual when she hit the stage. “Normally, I’d read it a few times the night before and get up the next day and shoot the scenes. But this time, I spent the day on it. I’d spend time between blocking and taping to really have it down. I took steps to make sure I’d deliver what I need to in a timely fashion.”
Nina and Cricket
Cast says she not only enjoyed working with Floyd but also with Bell in the episode that honored her 40th year on Y&R. “It was great,” the actress says. “She helped me out with rehearsing.” Cast adds that the actors don’t get to see the flashbacks on set when they’re taping but she still knew what was coming before she watched the air show. “They write them out in the scripts,” Cast reveals. “I knew what we’d be seeing, but I actually had no memory of them. It was fun watching the episode.”
The episode in which Christine reflected on her life delved into the Cricket/Nina friendship and how Cricket and Danny (Michael Damian) helped Nina turn her life around, which led to a brief marriage to Phillip Chancellor III (Thom Bierdz), Chance’s father. “I think [Nina] was unconditionally loved by Cricket and Danny,” offers Cast, noting that it was that love that helped begin Nina’s transformation.
“Nina had had her baby [Chance, played by Jeff Branson] taken from her and [wound up] on a park bench,” Cast recalls. “That was a big life change for her. Then, Cricket and Danny came along and helped her out. That was unconditional love. Love can change a person.” Cast adds with a laugh, “Nina put them through their paces. She was a handful.”
Sharon Farrell: Go With the Flo
Viewers learned more about Nina after the introduction of her well-intentioned but often inept mother Flo, played by the late Sharon Farrell, who passed away in August. “You never knew what [Sharon] was going to do,” Cast raves of her late TV mother and her acting choices. “I loved playing with her. She was just the sweetest mom in real life. Of course, on the show, she fell a little short in the ‘mom’ department. But [Flo] was fun!”
Will Cast Make a BOLD Move?
When she’s not hanging out in Genoa City, Nina spends time in Los Angeles — which just happens to not only be the locale of Y&R’s sister soap The Bold and the Beautiful but also the soap on which Cast’s former leading man, Michael Corbett (ex-David) showed up. Corbett was playing Judge Evan Scott but Soap Hub posed the idea that Evan could really be the presumed dead David with a new identity. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” Cast says.
There’d be other ways to bring Nina on to B&B should Brad Bell, executive producer/head writer, explore that option. Nina’s a writer, of course, which prompts Cast to quip, “Someone needs their memoir written!”
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