From Foster Care to Drucilla Winters: Victoria Rowell’s Masterclass in Knowing Your Worth
When Carlos King asked Victoria Rowell whether she accepts that she’s the number one soap opera actress ever, she didn’t do the humble shuffle. She didn’t deflect. She simply said: “I receive that.”
Honestly? That’s the whole lesson. In her sit-down with King, which walked through foster care, ballet, Hollywood and the fight that changed daytime TV, the woman generations of us knew as Drucilla Winters on The Young and the Restless kept her pearls on and her chin up.
She Knew Exactly Who Was Watching
Before anything else, Rowell gave flowers back to her audience. She shared that the viewers keeping Y&R at number one were largely Black women in the South, many 50 and older: grandmothers babysitting, braiding hair between their knees, two generations gathered around one screen.
If that doesn’t describe your grandma’s living room, whose does? Rowell said she walked onto the CBS set carrying that audience share “with pride,” knowing its value down to the Tide and Pampers sponsors were banking on. She wasn’t just a star. She was a strategist.
The Girl in the Red Keds
Her origin story deserves its own movie, and HBO has optioned her bestselling memoir, The Women Who Raised Me, twice. Born in Maine when it was one of 16 states barring white families from adopting mixed-race children, she started life in an orphanage before landing, at almost three, with Agatha Armstead on a 60-acre farm.
Mrs. Armstead was a gifted jazz pianist who’d once been offered a New York contract. She found six basic ballet steps in a book, and little Victoria practiced them every night while she played. Those six steps, danced in red Keds, got her into the Cambridge School of Ballet and eventually a scholarship to American Ballet Theatre School.
There’s quiet power in that. A Black elder with a book and a piano built a dancer, an actress and a legacy. Rowell still quotes her, right down to the line she leaned on when it was time to go: “Enough is enough and too much is foolish.”
Checking Every Box, Literally
On identity, Rowell refuses the one-box life. On forms, she checks the box for her white mother, Dorothy, and the box for her Black father, then draws a smiley face between them. “Don’t tell me I can’t claim my white mother,” she said, making clear she identifies as both Black and biracial.
And the full-circle moment: at 60, after decades of searching with help from DNA and a genealogist, she found her father’s family. He was a Marine stationed in Maine, his people hail from South Carolina, and she now meets relatives on the road to make up for lost time. Never stop looking for yourself, sis.
Opening Doors She Didn’t Have to Open
Here’s where everybody needs to pay attention. Rowell pitched storylines to creator Bill Bell, including ballet and foster care arcs, and Drucilla’s world grew into a cast of 12 Black characters. She recommended stylists who could do all hair and pushed for Black photographers at the show’s big moments.
Then she went bigger. Working with the National Urban League, she helped get the show to hire its first Black writer, Susan Dansby, ending what she called a 37-year lockout on Y&R and part of a 70-plus-year drought across it and The Bold and the Beautiful. She says she’s as proud of that as any Emmy nod.
Her three Emmy nominations and stack of NAACP Image recognition are beautiful. But changing who sits in the writers’ room? That’s generational.
Protecting Her Peace, On Her Own Terms
It wasn’t all champagne in Malibu. Rowell has been open about mistreatment from some co-stars and producers, though she refused to give anyone the press of a name. Meanwhile, she shot Y&R and Diagnosis Murder simultaneously for six years, memorizing every line on both, a skill she credits to ballet.
When directing, writing and producing opportunities didn’t come after roughly 14 years, she chose herself, calling it “self-preservation and self-respect.” Even then, she paid her own stylist out of pocket while advocating for the rest of the cast to feel just as cared for.
Still Building
Blackballed from soaps? She doesn’t dwell there. She created her own soap, The Rich and the Ruthless, which landed on ALLBLK and later BET+, bringing her right back to the CBS family on her own terms. Next up, she’s writing, producing and directing a Christmas movie in her home state of Maine.
Her other goal? A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame while she’s “above ground.” She says she’s the only actor to work two series simultaneously for six straight years, so the case writes itself.
Victoria Rowell taught us that receiving your flowers isn’t arrogance. It’s accounting. She did the work, opened the doors and kept her grace intact. The least we can do is say thank you, loudly.
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