Veteran soap opera actor Eric Braeden is enraged by Eva Longoria‘s recent “derogatory” remarks about soap operas and he’s letting everyone know. The 81-year-old actor, who has starred as Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless since 1980, slammed Eva, who acted on the show between 2001 and 2003, in a tweet spree on Sunday, March 19, after she made some apparently unsettling remarks about the show on a recent appearance on Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? “EVA LONGORIA: you just made derogatory remarks about daytime actors!” Eric seemingly yelled across the screen. “You simply weren’t good enough to survive the pressures of this medium!”
Would run rings around you!! And they did then!! From Robert di Nero to whoever they all are, many of them started in the medium you denigrate! It shows a complete lack of class!!
— Eric Braeden (@EBraeden) March 19, 2023
“You were very lucky to get on that ‘housewife’ show!,” he continued, referring to the hit ABC series, Desperate Housewives, on which Eva, 48, starred from 2004 until 2012. “You did one show in 8-12 days, with mediocre but salacious dialogue!” He added, “Our actresses would run rings around you!! And they did then!! From Robert [De Niro] to whoever they all are, many of them started in the medium you denigrate! It shows a complete lack of class!!”
Eric’s criticism of the actress came after her March 19 appearance of Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? , during which she revealed she pretended she wasn’t a soap actress in order to get better jobs. “When I got Young and the Restless, it didn’t pay enough for me to live off being an actor,” she claimed. “So I continued being a headhunter and Young and the Restless. And I would hide the fact I was on Young and the Restless to my clients, because they didn’t want, like, a dumb actress handing their accounts.”
“And one time one of my clients was like, ‘You look like a girl I’ve seen on a soap opera.’ And I go, ‘No, I don’t know who that is,'” she continued. “I was like the opposite of a publicist’s dream. I was like, ‘Don’t tell anybody I’m on that show’ because I was still making more money on my day job.”
Eric further expressed his opinion in the comment section of his tweets. In reply to one user who said they felt that there was nothing wrong with Eva’s statements on the show, he wrote, “Come on now, the whole tenor of that segment was one of embarrassment about her stint in Y&R and HOUSEWIVES! What did you not get about that?” He pushed back with a similar statement when someone proposed that Eva wasn’t talking about the soap at all. “Stop that nonsense, I saw and heard what she talked about!!! And it was derogatory!!!” he tweeted back.
He then used the response of one person who sided with him to further criticize Eva’s remarks. “She just wasn’t very good, simple as that!!! he typed back to a user who wrote, “I guess she forgot, or never truly knew how hard daytime performers work”.
However, Eric wasn’t there to completely shame Eva. In reply to a Twitter user who slighted her for acting in shampoo commercials, he replied, “I don‘t criticize her for that! Never would, but I will make remarks when she puts down daytime acting!! As I said, my female colleagues would act rings around her!!!” He then went as far as complimenting her on her upcoming CNN show, Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico. “Well, I wish her well in her new endeavor! I love that she is proud of her background and will do her heritage proud on this new CNN series about the culinary tradition of MEXICO!” he tweeted.
As of this writing, Eva has not publicly addressed Eric’s disappointment in her interview with Chris Wallace.