OLTL's Erika Slezak Celebrates Milestone

Happy St. Patrick's Day and Happy Anniversary to OLTL's Erika Slezak (Viki), who celebrates 40 years in Llanview today, March 17! Digest and Weekly were there as the cast and crew gathered at the set this afternoon to honor the actress with a surprise party, highlight reel and video tribute featuring some of her OLTL cast members as well as CASTLE's Nathan Fillion (ex-Joey), the ladies of THE VIEW, OLTL creator Agnes Nixon and Anthony Geary (Luke, GH). Slezak was overwhelmed with emotion at the party, saying, "I've been here for 40 years because I love it. I'm so grateful for the job and to you, my family. It's been just magical." The show will continue the celebration with a special episode next month.

That Rocks

Hopefully There Is Video Of That That Makes The Youtube Postings

Hope they took pictures and they will be in the mags. Congrats, Erika!!

There are 4 small pictures of the party at abcmedianet.com. Here is a group shot:

http://www.abcmedian...123758_2580.htm

Congratulations to the exquisite brilliance that is Erika Slezak on her astounding 40 years as "Viki Lord," the heart and soul of Llanview!

That's great! I'm glad to see that so many others outside of OLTL also honored her. I love that Agnes Nixon was involved. Not that it will happen but I wish they would ask Agnes for some story advice for Viki - the past is often the future.

Forty Years of being prim! You gotta love Viki though, her perfection can drive you to the point where she drives you crazy, but she had so many fun stories. Buchanan City, Heaven, the stroke, Niki, Eterna...the 80s would not have been as fun without her. The 90s saw boring and annoying Sloane and the end of Clint so this is not as good a period. The 00s had whathisname who called her Blondie, but I did get a laugh at the return of daddy Victor and Mitch.

I wish they took a week showing the best of Viki: her first episode on Monday, and then maybe an episode from each decade. The 70s seem lost to the mists of pre-VCR history and thus out of reach of youtube, but there has to be some classic episode somewhere.

The only 70s Viki is the 1976 episode on Daytime to Remember, and then towards the end of the decade, where there were hallucinations of Niki, and the trial of Marco, and so on. You can see that on Youtube under marcowuzmypimp.

Congratulations Erika. OLTL is NOTHING without you.

Aw, that's amazing. Congrats Erika!

My eyes are so tired from working all day, I read this thread as "Erika Slezak's surprise pregnancy."

AHH! You've given us the best news. If Digest and Weekly were both there, i'm positive they will put the photo's in their magazines, eventually. I'm very happy because i was appauled that neither magazine has even mentioned Erika's anniversary in the magazines. Maybe they are planning to do a spread of the suprise party photo's. I hope so. She deserves it.

and BTW, I think the 1990's were the best of times for Erika. She did Viki's stroke, Viki loosing megan, Viki having DID, then Viki meeting Ben at the end. It's what won her three of her six emmy's. She won in 1992 1995 and 1996 for her work in 1991, 1994 and 1995.

Edited March 18, 201114 yr by BKuzak

Too bad ABC cut the repeats...they might have shelled out a day of Viki episodes, but who knows? Erika Slezak is nowhere near as accomplished and important to daytime as Vaaaanessamarcilgiovinazzoooooo.

March 18, 2011

I was lucky enough to be invited to the OLTL set to help celebrate Erika Slezak's (Viki) 40th anniversary with the show. What a treat! After our cabbie deftly navigated the way through the green streets of Manhattan (to avoid all the St. Paddy's day chaos and the parade-goers on Fifth Avenue), Digest Editor Stephanie Sloane, Weekly's Gabby Winkel and I arrived at ABC studios, where we were quickly ushered to a "holding room" and instructed to keep quiet until OLTL wrapped filming so we could surprise Slezak, who was under the impression that the cast was having a special St. Patrick's Day lunch. While we waited, we chatted with Slezak's daughter Amanda, who'd come by to congratulate her mom's milestone and I even spied Billy Ray Cyrus walk through with his entourage for his appearance on THE VIEW! When everyone gathered, OLTL EP Frank Valentini brought Slezak in and she was definitely blow away by the surprise and razzed her hubby Brian for fibbing to her to keep her distracted! After a fantastic set of speeches by Jerry verDorn (Clint) and Robin Strasser (Dorian) and a great tribute video was shown. Afterward, I got the chance to mix and mingle with the actors who were on set that day to celebrate with Slezak. Josh Kelly (Cutter) got into the spirit of the day and was completely decked out in green for St. Paddys! I also finally got the chance to meet HW Ron Carlivati in person. It was so fun to be part of such a remarkable day for the dynamic dame Slezak and a truly memorable daytime moment.

http://www.soapoperadigest.com/opinions/danielle-mcclure/

Here's a video of Erika's surprise party.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STwGwz9pCvs

Thanks for all the information, wish there was more, but glad there was some information on the web about the surprise party.