Bold and Beautiful’s Scott Clifton Speaks Out on Liam’s Fate: ‘He Could Be Dead in Minutes’ (EXCL)

On Bold and Beautiful, Liam’s life was already hanging in the balance due to his inoperable brain tumor when he took a bullet from unhinged baddie Luna Nozawa on the July 8 episode. Now, after shooting Luna in an effort to save the life of his ex-wife, Steffy Forrester, doctors are frantically trying to save Liam. As his character’s fate remains a bigger question mark than ever, Soap Opera Digest got the inside scoop from his Daytime Emmy-winning portrayer, Scott Clifton.

Bullet Points

After Liam’s tumor diagnosis, Clifton says that his character getting shot was not on his bingo card. “That was surprising, even to me,” he notes of the story beat. “But it was really cool and fun to do, and the show executed it really well.”

He had a ball filming the shooting. “The way that we do firearms now on set is completely different from how it was even 10 years ago, and how we do blood,” he notes. “I love getting bloody on the show. I hate regular makeup that’s supposed to make you look pretty, but I love special effects makeup! That was so fun, going through that process [with the show’s makeup artists].”

As Clifton sees it, the extreme circumstances of the situation left Liam feeling like he had no choice but to open fire on Luna. “I mean, he comes in, he sees that Luna is still very much a threat to Steffy. She’s still standing. She’s already shot Sheila, she’s got a gun trained on Steffy, and Luna has just shot Liam! So, not only is Liam dying of a brain tumor, but he’s also been shot in the stomach and he’s probably in a state of shock. His first principle is, ‘Save Steffy.’ That’s been his thing, to make sure that Steffy and all the kids are safe from Luna. And the clock started ticking even faster. I mean, the brain tumor was one thing, but Liam knows that he could be dead in a matter of minutes — and the moment he’s dead, Steffy could be dead right after, because there’s nothing he can do to save her at that point, if he’s gone!”

Indeed, Liam’s last words before firing the gun at Luna were, “I’m a dead man anyway.” Muses Clifton, “I think that line, I don’t know if we came up with that line on set in the moment, but the idea is just, clearly, Liam is not worried about going to jail for killing somebody. He’s not worried about how he’s gonna look or if he’s a bad guy for shooting Luna. And I think the character can be forgiven for just thinking in terms of pure survival of his people. The choice was very clear for Liam that he had to take Luna with him if he was going to go, because that was the only way to make sure that the people he loves are safe after he’s gone — which has kind of been his whole thing for the past several preceding weeks [since finding out about his tumor].”

Final Countdown?

If Liam doesn’t pull through surgery, and saving Steffy by shooting the woman who was trying to kill her ends up being the swan song for the character Clifton has played since 2010, what does he think of that as an end to Liam’s story? “The one thing something like this may rob you of is that sort of clichéd deathbed, good-bye monologue, and that’s just been done so many times in so many different ways by actors far superior to myself,” he says. “I wouldn’t be inventing anything new under the sun!”

He also appreciates the element of surprise that would come with Liam dying, but not of the tumor he’s been battling for months now. “I think that soap audiences, they know how, to some degree, we have this bag of tricks, right? And we draw from this bag of soap opera tricks. And I think it’s always really, really nice when we can kind of set up an expectation and then at the very last minute, do a little switcheroo and go, ‘You think he’s gonna die? Well, actually, this is how he’s gonna die.’ The expectation is still there, but the execution of it completely pulls the rug out from under you. I love that.”

Plus, he’d go out with some instantly iconic last words. “If my final line ever on The Bold and the Beautiful was, ‘I’m a dead man anyway,’ that’s pretty freakin’ cool,” he grins.

Life Goes On?

On the other hand, if Liam does survive the shooting, he’s not exactly out of the woods. “If the ball rolls off the roof the other way and it turns out that this is not Liam’s demise, well, he’s still got the brain tumor to worry about, obviously,” Clifton points out. “And at this point, you know, Dollar Bill’s son has now ended up in the hospital with a gunshot wound to his chest or stomach or whatever it is. And now Bill has entered the chat, so to speak.”

Liam’s shooting, Clifton declares, “is a perfect way to introduce the character of Bill to the storyline. It makes it impossible not to, and that is something that fans have been waiting for for a long time! Everybody’s been going, ‘Okay, when is Bill gonna find out about this? And I think it’s reasonable to say that if Liam has any chance of surviving this, you can’t not see Bill come into play in the very next shot.”

Do you think this is truly the end of Liam’s time on B&B? Let us know in the comments below!