Y&R’s Susan Walters Reveals How She Was Bullied off Twitter

Soap fans have always been an outspoken bunch. And with the rise of social media, they have taken to the different platforms to voice their opinions, some of which can get pretty nasty since they can hide behind an anonymous screen name. When Susan Walters first joined THE YOUNG & THE RESTLESS as Diane Jenkins back in 2001, there was no such thing as Facebook or Twitter, but when she returned to the soap in March 2022, it was a whole different world.

When the actress sat down with co-star Peter Bergman (Jack) for an interview with TVNewsCheck, the topic of social media came up and she explained how she fled Twitter in record time.

“There wasn’t Twitter when I was on the show before,” Walters said. “So I made the mistake of going on Twitter after I came back to the show. And I’m thinking, Diane’s gotten older, Susan’s gotten older, and it will be very empowering for people to see that I’ve aged.

“It wasn’t pretty at all,” she continued. “I was really blown away by how… nasty people were about the way me, Susan, looked. And now that the character of Diane has taken off and they’ve been reintroduced to Diane, now comments would be about Diane if I was still looking at Twitter, which of course, I never do. It’s not healthy for me.”

Especially on a platform like Twitter, there isn’t a lot of moderation to keep “fans” from saying abhorrent and truly hateful things about soap stars. But the Y&R star admitted that wasn’t even the real issue for her. “Our job as an actor is to not think of ourselves as actors doing this thing and the result of somebody seeing it,” Walters explained. “My job today was that my character is in a situation and his character is talking to me about it, right? And we are those people.

“So to constantly be worrying about the result,” she added, “which is written about on social media, doesn’t serve me as an actor at all. And especially if people are discussing negative things about the way they think you look. That really doesn’t do me any good.”

Still, the actress still appreciates that social media exists as a way for fans to come together to discuss their favorite soaps. “It’s fun that people who really love the show get on and have such passionate chats about it,” Walters admitted. She just won’t be participating in them!