Tracey Bregman Got ‘Death Threats’ for Bullying Beth Maitland on Soap

Tracey Bregman has portrayed Lauren Fenmore on The Young and the Restless — and later The Bold and the Beautiful — since 1983, but the character, who is now a fan favorite, wasn’t always loved.

Bregman, 62, opened up about the backlash she received for her character’s actions on the show on the Tuesday, August 26, episode of CBS’s “Soapy” podcast.

“Having to be mean to Beth Maitland, I mean, come on,” she said.

Bregman and Maitland, 67, who plays Traci Abbott, are close friends, which made it difficult to bully her early on in the two characters’ story line.

“And I knew, because we were so close, how she was really feeling about a lot of things,” Bregman continued. “And it was a story that was kind of based on her being a little overweight and being conscious about that. And then, I had to say the worst things to her, and Beth will tell you that I cried more than she did over it because I could barely get it out sometimes.”

A lot of Bregman’s bullying was around Traci being overweight — something the audience was not happy to see Bregman mock.

“But I will tell you, it was a double-edged sword, playing the mean girl, because I would get death threats and people tried to run me off the freeway. It was bad,” she continued. “There were some bad parts of it that I never really talked about, actually. I’ve never really talked about it.”

But Bregman also brought up the “fun times” the two of them had together on set, which, ironically, included when their characters got into a physical fight. Through it all, she didn’t complain. As she put it, “It was also an extraordinary story for us to play as actors.”

More than that, Bregman’s on-screen husband, Christian LeBlanc, who portrays Michael Baldwin, added that playing the villain requires “vulnerability and humanity underneath the mean thing,” meaning Bregman’s internal struggle over her character’s meanness probably helped the character.

LeBlanc, 67, added that he’s often asked if he would rather play a “good guy” or “bad guy,” and his answer is neither.

“My answer is always, ‘I’d like to play a human person,’ because there’s always the one who does the bad things for a good reason, and the good things for a bad reason,” he said. “That’s the heart of it. And if you’re playing that full-bodied human being, there is a chance for redemption, because that’s part of the human condition.”

The Young and the Restless airs on CBS weekdays.