First Look: ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ Cast Reunites to Celebrate 38 Years (PHOTO)
The Bold and the Beautiful will celebrate 38 years on the air on March 23, and has released a brand-new cast photo exclusively on TV Insider.
Bradley Bell, the executive producer and head writer of the show, grew up with television playing a pivotal role in his formative years. His parents, the late William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell, were the co-creators of The Young and the Restless and B&B, and Bill Bell had been the head writer at Days of our Lives prior to that, so soaps were undeniably the family business.
“We never sat at the dining room table,” recalls Bell. “There were always trays in front of the TV, where we would watch the VHS tapes that were mailed special delivery to Chicago [where he was raised]. As a kid I was watching Days of Our Lives until the age of 9 when Young and Restless was created, and then we were watching all of those together. To hear my dad do his editorial while the show was on was just an incredible opportunity to absorb it and either feel like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m getting this,’ or, ‘I need to run from this,’ and from an early age, it clicked with me. I love television and I love soaps.”
One of the soaps he loved, however, was on a competing network. “I was a big All My Children fan,” Bell confides. “I can say that now that my dad has passed away, but I told him once and it did not go over well. He was very upset. But when I was in college, I would look at all the other shows. I would see how they would do their story arcs differently from my dad and it was just something that grabbed me.”
So, when his parents began creating B&B in 1986, Bell was firmly on board to be a part of the new endeavor. “I remember the whole casting process at the end of ’86 and early ’87, before we premiered on March 23rd of ’87,” he says. “You never quite know when you’re putting together an original cast, how the chemistry will be, but we knew that Ronn Moss [then-Ridge Forrester] and Katherine Kelly Lang [Brooke Logan] and Joanna Johnson [Caroline Spencer] had great chemistry from the get-go.”
The hiring of Susan Flannery (Stephanie Forrester), who had previously played Days’ Laura Horton when Bill Bell was the head writer of the show, took place at the famed Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills. “My father loved working with Susan Flannery, so she wasn’t in the casting process,” Bell explains. “That was actually a meeting between my dad and Susan, and I was there. He floated the idea and she accepted. Imagine the two of them having martinis and talking about a new series. It was all relatively new to me. I had never really gotten to know a lot of the actors, but then meeting Susan, I was like, ‘Wow, OK, this is a matriarch. She packs a punch,’ and my dad said, ‘She’s the most brilliant actress,’ and, of course, she is.”
Having John McCook (Eric Forrester) and Lang on the show since the first episode has provided a welcome stability to the canvas. “It’s unnatural for actors to take on a role and play it this long,” Bell points out. “By nature, they take on different parts and become different characters, but these two, their commitment to the show, their love for the show and their leadership, on and off screen, John and Kelly are a dream. I’m grateful for them every day.”
Bell has so many notable moments and memories from the past few decades, as well as storyline highlights. “So many of them stand out in both directions because you don’t know whether a story will sink or swim and some of them, admittedly, were kind of bombs,” he confesses. “You roll the dice and see where it takes you and if for some reason it doesn’t work, it’s a disaster. But I loved everything [the late] Darlene Conley [Sally Spectra] did. I loved the comic relief the Spectra group provided. I loved the rivalry between Sally and Stephanie. I loved Stephanie’s stuff on Skid Row [in 2010] and dying in Brooke’s arms [in 2012]. The scenes with Amber [Moore, Adrienne Frantz] doing the baby swap [in 1999] were great. The addition of Jacqueline MacInnes Wood [as Steffy Forrester in 2008] turned the show upside down and she is an incredible actress, a wonderful person to work with and so talented, as is Annika Noelle [Hope Logan]. Don Diamont was amazing when he joined the show [in 2009] and gave us Bill Spencer and he’s defined that character so sharply.
“Having lost Susan and Ronn [in 2012 when they opted to leave], there were questions of, would that be the demise of the show, but Thorsten Kaye came in [in 2013 as Ridge] and Kelly found new avenues with him. I look at the current cast photo, and am grateful that we have such incredible talent on the show right now. I just think that they’re wonderful and wonderful people as well.”
As for what’s coming up on the soap, Bell teases, “We have the Nozawa family with great actors and a story that’s unraveling through through Finn [Finnegan, Tanner Novlan]. I’m excited that not only will Luna [Nozawa, Lisa Yamada] find her father at long last, but she’s going to find her grandmother too, Sheila Carter [Kimberlin Brown]. So that’s going to give us a whole new avenue to play with Lisa and Kimberlin. We have the business story with Ridge and Eric, determined to come back to the place that Eric founded, and how will that roll out with Carter [Lawrence Saint-Victor] and Hope and Brooke, who has been put in a very difficult position. We have Rebecca Budig [Taylor Hayes] on board, and she is a dream. The character of Taylor is going to see some new challenges. We have a great story for Liam [Spencer, Scott Clifton] coming up as well, which I am very excited about.”
With Beyond the Gates set to premiere on February 24, Bell feels there is a lot of good news about daytime after years of doomsday headlines that the genre was dying. “I think that soaps are good drivers [of viewership] because our fans are so loyal,” he points out. “I think Days airing directly on Peacock is great evidence that we do have value on the streaming platforms and with the beginning of Beyond the Gates, it shows a resurgence and interest in soap operas and a healthier environment for these daily shows.”
As he looks ahead to the 38th anniversary in March, Bell can’t help but marvel at the longevity of the show. “When we started B&B, Y&R was in the 3,000s in terms of episode numbers and I remember when Y&R hit episode 4,000, I thought, ‘Gosh, that’s such a huge number,’ ” he reflects. “But now, we’re doing episode 9,504 and it’s at a point where the numbers are staggering. I look at myself in the mirror sometimes and think, ‘You’ve spent your whole life doing this. Are you crazy?’ But then I think of what a wonderful life it’s been, and to create stories and have fun and have people watch it and care about these characters is something very special.”
