Kate Linder recently celebrated 40 years of portraying Esther Valentine on The Young and the Restless. During a Soap Hub fireside chat, she explained the special significance of her character’s first name.
Kate Linder Gives Soap Fans Insight Into Esther’s Name
The actress sat down with soap fans on May 19, 2022, giving some special insight into her time on the CBS daytime drama. Soap Hub’s own Michael Maloney hosted the evening. At one point, he asked Linder about the origin of Esther’s name because the first scripts simply said ‘maid’ on them.
“Jeanne [Cooper, Katherine Chancellor] and I, we’d always run our scenes together, and we’d work on them. One day when we went to tape, she started calling me Esther,” explained Linder. “Fortunately I responded and didn’t go ‘who is she talking about?'”
However, the name had an even deeper meaning for Kate Linder, and Cooper didn’t even realize it at the time when she started using it as the name of Katherine’s maid. “What she didn’t know, and what a lot of people don’t know, is that Esther was my grandmother’s name. So that was really, really fortuitous when you think about it.”
Ultimately, Cooper continued calling her Esther, and she even brought other members of the scene into it. Ultimately, the writers started picking up on it. As for how Linder felt when she first saw her character’s name noted on the script instead of the more generic ‘maid?’ “I was just blown away. I was so excited,” she revealed.
Ultimately, Y&R held a national contest to choose Esther’s last name. Among the three names were Valentine and Diamond. Ultimately, Valentine won, which was just as special considering her real-life wedding was on February 14. The rest, as they say, is soap opera history.
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