Michael Damian Nearly Got Andrew Lloyd Webber on Y&R!
Fans of THE YOUNG & THE RESTLESS star Michael Damian (Danny) know that he has had hit songs like “Rock On” and appeared on Broadway in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. In fact, the soap had to write the actor off the canvas back in 1993 when he was hired to star in the hit musical, so then-headwriter William J. Bell opted to have Danny leave Genoa City for the same reason.
However, viewers might not realize that Joseph’s award-winning composer, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, was supposed to make a special appearance on Y&R to help usher Danny out of town! “Andrew saw it more as a cameo appearance, you know, something very brief,” Michael Damian (Danny) confided in a recent issue of Soap Opera Digest. “But Bill got excited about it and ended up writing something much more substantial. I saw it, and it was really good stuff, but it was like a Victor-type monologue.”
While it would have been fascinating to see Webber playing himself taking Danny off to Broadway, it unfortunately never came to pass. “Andrew isn’t an actor so I think he panicked when he saw what Bill had written for him,” Damian said before joking: “Either that or he was too busy writing Sunset Boulevard.”
Although Webber ultimately never brought Broadway to Genoa City, he instead brought Genoa City to Broadway. “Of course, Bill was very disappointed,” Damian revealed, “but Andrew made up for it by giving tickets to the entire cast and crew to come see one of my performances.”
