but when offered the role she learned she was replacing someone else. The producers informed Ernest Graves and Lynn Benesch, who played Viki's father Victor Lord and sister Meredith Lord, of the change in advance, but no one else in the cast or crew knew of the switch when Slezak arrived to work. Slezak became synonymous with the character since her first appearance in the role March 17, 1971, playing Victoria continually for 41 years until the original One Life television finale in 2012. Slezak reprised the role onscreen upon Prospect Park resumption of the serial from April 29, 2013 through the final episode released August 19, 2013. Two other actresses portrayed Victoria while Slezak was on maternity and personal leave: Christine Jones in 1980 and 1981, and Judith Barcroft in 1987. In the summer of 2003, Slezak's real-life daughter, Amanda Davies, portrayed a teenaged Victoria in flashbacks. Leah Marie Hays played the role of a young Victoria Lord in a series of flashbacks as well. At the death of show and character creator Agnes Nixon in 2016, Slezak eulogized that, "When she hired me to play Viki on One Life To Live, she changed my life and my career and I will forever be grateful to her." Slezak expressed interest for reprising portrayal of the character in a short-term guest appearance on ABC's last remaining soap opera, General Hospital, in a March 2018 interview with Soap Opera Digest magazine, ahead of the 50th anniversary of the July 1968 premiere of One Life to Live. Characterization At the debut episode of One Life to Live July 15, 1968, twentysomething recent college graduate and heiress Victoria "Viki" Lord is described by author Martha Nochimson as "blonde [and] ivory-complexioned ... the clichéd American princess," personifying the "woman on a pedestal" archetype. The show's heroine from the outset, ingenue Victoria initially harbors a strong Electra complex and suffers a bout with multiple personalities prompted by her mother Eugenia's absence from childhood and father Victor's incessant grooming of her to eventually helm the family's communication business, Lord Enterprises. As Erika Slezak stepped into the role in 1971, head writer Nixon matured Victoria to a self-assured working woman managing fictional Llanview's predominant newspaper, The Banner. An increasingly headstrong Victoria, relinquishing her primal desires to pander to Victor, marries working-class Banner editor Joe Riley, much to the patriarch's chagrin. By the mid-1980s, Victoria largely adopts a