2001 Big 30
Soap Opera Weekly
April 10, 2001
Volume 12, Issue 15
Erika Slezak Hits the Big 3-0 in Llanview
By: unknown
It's impossible to do justice to a 30-year, five-time Emmy tenure in one afternoon. Still the cast and crew of One Life to Live crammed many wonderful memories into a setside press reception to honor Erika Slezak for her three decades as Victoria Lord Riley Burke Riley Buchanan Buchanan Carpenter Davidson. There was also a party the previous evening at Shelly's New York.
Executive Producer Gary Tomlin told Soap Opera Weekly, "Erika has a wonderful family; a wonderful husband, a great life here in New York, and she said last night she doesn't know how 30 years has gone by. I think that's the way it happens. You enjoy what you do and everything else just hops on by, and here you are 30 years later." When it came time for the clip package, guests were treated to a montage of 30 years of Viki, underscored by Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World.
Slezak also was honored by New York's mayor, Rudolph Giuliani. Julianne Cho, his representative, read a proclamation declaring March 16 "Erika Slezak Day." Then it was the actress' turn to take the floor. Citing all of Viki's various struggles over the last 30 years (including her paralysis and her battle with dissociative identity disorder), Slezak stressed that her own job - or OLTL for that matter - would not be possible without the contribution of every single person in that studio. True. But for one afternoon, it was Slezak's One (Amazing) Life that deserved to be in the spotlight.
