As a 23-year-old actress back in 1971, Erika Slezak had no idea what she was getting herself into when she joined the cast of "One Life to Live."
"Not in my wildest dreams would I have imagined this. I've been here 22 years," Slezak said with a touch of amazement in her voice. "Quite frankly, I was the child of an actor and I was an actress. I had worked in repertory and summer stock. And for me, a long engagement was nine months."The daughter of Tony-winning actor Walter Slezak, Erika called her father to tell him about her job offer.
"When I called him and said, `I've just been offered a job on a daytime television show,' he said, `Oh, that's wonderful!'
"I said, `It's for two years.' He dropped the phone.
"When he picked it up again, he said, `Take it! Take it! Take it!'
"The thought of being employed in one place for two years was so extraordinary for an actress who had gone season to season. . . . Two years seemed unbelievable.
"Of course, I was so stupid I didn't know they could have fired me at any 13-week period. I didn't. I didn't read the contract. My agent said, `Sign it. It's a good job.' "
And it has turned out to be just that. Slezak has won three Emmy Awards as outstanding lead actress for her portrayal of Victoria Lord Buchanan, an original character who is still the linchpin of "One Life to Live" as the show celebrates its silver anniversary Thursday.
(Beginning Monday at noon on Ch. 4, the show will celebrate with a week's worth of episodes that feature flashbacks from those 25 years.)
Viki was a young ingenue when Slezak joined the show, the daughter of the fictional town of Llanview's most powerful man, and she was married to a man who was several steps below her on the social ladder.
In the ensuing years, the character has grown into the town matriarch, with children almost as old as Viki was when the show began. And, for the most part, the writers have kept Viki highly involved in the show's major plot-lines.
"There was a time, though, between 15 and 10 years ago when I didn't do a lot. . . . I think had things continued like that I may have left," Slezak said. "But (former executive producer) Paul Rauch came in and sort of redid the whole show and he wanted a real focus point, and he put Viki back in the middle where she was at the beginning. . . . And made it very interesting for me and very, very attractive for me to want to stay because he let me play all these marvelous characters and do these wonderful things - go to heaven and go to the Old West. He kept me very happy."
Yes, Viki went to heaven for a time, where she ran into a whole bunch of former "One Lifers" who had passed on. And when her third husband, Clint Buchanan (Clint Ritchie), was mysteriously transported to the Old West, Slezak got to play another character, Miss Ginny, a schoolmarm who turned out to be a Buchanan forebear.
Slezak is still particularly fond of Miss Ginny.
"I got her beginning, middle and end," she said. (Slezak is the third actress to play Viki.) "I took a character who, at the beginning, was naive - almost like a girl. . . . In the course of the two- or three-month story, she grew up. She had her heart broken, she fell in love.
"By the end of the story, it was almost like we could leave Ginny then because she was well on her way to being happy. She had grown up, she had matured. That was what I loved so much about her - I was able to take her full circle."
Through it all - including her own real-life marriage and the birth of her two children - Slezak has continued to sign a series of two-year contracts.
"Those first two years ended so quickly. My agent called and said, `They'd like to renegotiate and stay.' I said, `Yes, please.'
"And every two years they keep calling and saying they'd like me to stay. And I keep saying, `Yes, please.' "
But how much longer will she remain on "One Life to Live?" Will she be there to celebrate the 30th, 35th or 40th anniversaries?
"I don't know about 10 or 15 years," Slezak said. "I'll do it until it's not fun for me anymore. Fortunately, it's almost always been a lot of fun, and it still is at the moment."