Colleen Zenk admits that she’s disappointed her run as The Young and the Restless’ Jordan Howard has come to an end. “I’m sad Jordan went away so quickly,” she says of her alter ego, who met her maker last week after swallowing poisoned tea. “I thought that Ian [Ray Wise] and Jordan would go out like Bonnie and Clyde together.”
Nevertheless, Zenk, who played As The World Turns’ Barbara Ryan from 1978 to the show’s finale in 2010, feels thankful to have been hired for the role after more than a decade away from soaps. “What a gift at my age and my tenure to be given that kind of character,” she reflects. “And to be able to work with the people that I worked with, first with Mel [Thomas Scott, Nikki Newman], then Amelia [Heinle, Victoria Newman] and sweet little Hayley [Erin, Claire Grace] and Eric [Braeden, Victor Newman] and then Ray [Wise]. It’s been so much fun.”
When the actress was initially tapped to play Jordan in 2023, the gig was short-term but quickly became longer. “When Josh [Griffith, executive producer/head writer] first got a hold of me, he said, ‘I’ve got this character. Are you interested? It’s only about 12 shows,’ ” she recalls. “And I said, ‘I’m in.’ And then the 12 shows turned into 50 and then I came back for another 22. It’s just been a great ride with a great group of people, from actors to production.”
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Though Zenk had plenty of daytime experience under her belt, she says she battled nerves when she showed up to the studio. “It was daunting, and I was completely intimidated,” she confides. “Coming into the show that first week, I was terrified until Eric, on our first or second day of work, looked into the camera and he said, ‘Thank God, you hired me a pro.’”
She also found many familiar faces on set to help ease her way. “There are so many people out there from World Turns and Guiding Light,” she explains. “Chris LeBlanc [Michael Baldwin, who played ATWT’s Kirk McCall], I’ve kept up with for years and I’ve known Peter Bergman [Jack Abbott] since we were both 22. So, the New Yorkers made me feel like I was home, between Vivian Gundaker, one of our main producers who was the lead producer on World Turns, who I’ve known since she was an intern, down to Fritz Brekeller, who is one of our stage managers, who I’ve known since he was an intern on World Turns. And there were just so many people that came through that I’ve known from other shows in New York. Little Lizzie Henderson [Chloe Mitchell, who played All My Children’s Maggie and Frankie Stone] and I rebonded, which was great.”
Zenk also met some new co-stars over the months she spent there. “I met Jess Walton [Jill Abbott] for the first time when she came back for Devon [Bryton James] and Abby’s [Melissa Ordway] wedding [last November],” Zenk relays. “We were in the makeup room, and she gets up out of the makeup chair, she sees me, she runs over and we both start crying because we couldn’t believe after all these years, we had never met each other. And we had that beautiful little moment in the makeup room in front of everybody, and then I never saw her again.”
Ray Wise was another actor with whom she developed a close bond. “I’ve never met Ray before, but I knew his work,” she shares. “He’s everything that everyone told me he would be. He’s the real deal. He is kind, he is supportive, he is gracious, he’s funny as hell and he’s a pure gentleman. And he’s an actor who supports other actors. I loved my time with him, and we became good friends, and he’s called a couple of times since I’ve been home just checking up on me.”
There are other performers Zenk wishes she could have shared scenes with before she wrapped her run. “I never got a chance to work with Peter [Bergman],” she laments. “I only had one day with Christian [LeBlanc]. And Michelle Stafford [Phyllis Summers]! I adore her and never got to work with her or Tracey [E. Bregman, Lauren Fenmore]. We became really good friends. I thought I was going to be in the Abbott world when I came back but that didn’t happen. I would have loved to work with the Abbotts — Peter, Eileen [Davidson, Ashley Abbott] and Beth [Maitland, Traci Abbott] — all of them over there.”
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Zenk says she loved working out what made Jordan tick and going along for the ride as she descended into madness. “I wasn’t given really any direction,” she notes. “I just had to go with what was on the page and figure Jordan out myself. The only thing I kept saying to Josh Griffith was, ‘If I go too far, pull me back.’ He said, ‘You can’t go too far.’ I went, ‘OK.’ That was very freeing as an actor. I had to jump in with both feet and not even think about how out there I was being.”
The actress appreciates the support she received from the show’s devoted fans when they heard she was cast in the role, and the positive feedback since. “I didn’t expect the overwhelming welcome I got when I came back and now I’m getting the overwhelming sadness because they’re saying, ‘No, no, don’t die,’ ” she muses. “So, I’ve had it from both ends and it’s been lovely. It’s been really lovely just seeing the outpouring of love and the respect that I’ve had from everybody.”
Though she’s kept busy since her Oakdale days, Zenk reports that she fully embraced her soap return. “I’ve been able to do a lot of different things since World Turns,” she offers. “I played Tallulah Bankhead in Looped, I did Hello, Dolly! again, and I played the gun-toting madam on a Western web series called Thurston. There was also a lot that came into my lap over the last decade or so that I turned down because I didn’t feel it was right. But when Josh got a hold of me for this, I felt it was right.”
And while she wishes the job could have lasted longer, “my biggest takeaway is I can still work this medium,” Zenk declares. “I can still do this. And for my age with no work, I look pretty good on camera, not too bad. For a 72-year-old woman to be given this kind of opportunity, I’d jump in again.”
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