Lights, camera, Ventura!

By JIM RAGSDALE

June 16, 2000 Web posted at: 11:57 AM EDT (1557 GMT)

LOS ANGELES (St. Paul Pioneer Planet) -- The stage manager called for quiet, the boom mike hovered over his famous pate and Gov. Jesse Ventura laid out a secret plan to capture the presidency in four years.

Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura

``Why don't you run with me? We'd be a dream ticket.'' Minnesota's real-life governor murmured to Victor Newman, the reigning corporate cad of daytime television. ``That's quite the ticket -- V & V, Ventura and Victor.''

Not to worry -- it's just show business.

In a return to his roots in the spotlight, Ventura joined the cast of ``The Young and the Restless,'' his favorite soap opera, for a few hours at CBS Television City in Los Angeles on Wednesday. He infused state and national politics into three scenes he taped with Eric Braeden, who plays Victor Newman, and Melody Thomas Scott, who plays Victor's dishy ex.

Ventura, a former wrestler, talk-radio host, and bit player in movies and TV, got to play his favorite role: himself. He was paid union scale of about $700, which he said he will donate to charity, and he brought a Jesse-sized amount of publicity to the show and to himself. The show will air July 10.

``It's good for the show -- it gets a lot of publicity,'' said Edward Scott, ``Y&R'' executive producer, as he watched waves of camera crews take turns interviewing Ventura and his wife, Terry, after the performance. ``And it doesn't hurt him. We're big, big, big in the Midwest.''

The soap opera walk-on -- the show-business centerpiece of the Venturas' six-day trip to California -- resulted from a comment Ventura made in a C-SPAN interview soon after his election. He talked about how he became addicted to soaps during his wrestling days, when he had daylight hours to kill before the night's match, and singled out the top-rated ``The Young and the Restless'' as his favorite.

Producers began courting the new governor, sending him an autographed cast photo and trying to arrange their schedules and scripts for a walk-on. Ventura wanted to do a scene with the Victor Newman character, whose ruthlessness has made him the governor's favorite.

Originally, producers hoped to tape the scenes when Ventura was in Los Angeles to drum up film industry business last March. But at that time, the script had the Victor Newman character holed up in a cabin in Arizona, recovering from a plane crash.

Once the soap opera stars aligned, Ventura agreed to do the show during this trip, in which he is combining state business with show business.

The cameo allowed him to fuse his political and celebrity roles in a way only Hollywood could appreciate.

Dressed in a gubernatorial gray suit, Ventura carried his script through a phalanx of cameras from his dressing room to the set, the luxurious, wood-paneled office of that dastardly corporate raider, Victor Newman.

With his wife, security guards, spokesman and personal agent looking on, Ventura rehearsed, then taped his scenes with Braeden and Scott, all pausing occasionally to admire one another.

After taping, the actors and Ventura sat for interviews and praised each other's work. Thomas Scott, in a hot-purple micro-mini, and Braeden, acting the heavy even offstage, couldn't say enough about their temporary co-star.

``I said, `Let's do a series together,' '' Braeden said of an off-stage conversation with Ventura. ``He suggested a series about really running for president.''

After he finished his scenes, Ventura was approached by Jeanne Cooper, a cast veteran who plays the show's matriarch. She said she told Ventura he should be a permanent member of the cast: He's ``sexier than Victor Newman.''

Ventura could be overheard explaining his present job in a way that did not make him sound like a candidate for re-election.

``I'd love to,'' Ventura told Cooper, ``but I think I have work for about two-and-a-half more years.''

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