The 51st ANNUAL DAYTIME EMMY AWARDS will be held on Friday, June 7, with the ceremony airing live on CBS starting at 8 p.m. ET. Soap Opera Digest chatted with the nominees to get the scoop on how they found out, what episodes they submitted, and more as we count down to daytime’s biggest night!
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Outstanding Guest Performance
Ashley Jones (BRIDGET, BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL)
What did you submit?
“I was on the show mainly for the storyline with my dad, Eric Forrester — John McCook, who’s also nominated, as you know. It’s pretty much the stuff that when [speaking in character] I came home thinking I was coming home for a big party or a fashion show, and then I got the news pretty much in real-time on the show [that] my dad is dying and [they] told me it’s really progressed. So it showed a myriad of emotions, a little bit of an arc there of getting excited to come home and see my family and then finding out this information — and no one told me. I’m the doctor. I’m very well connected. I could have helped with this. I felt betrayed. And then I kind of went into doctor mode. So there was a bunch of very emotional, a bunch of grief and then anger at Ridge. And then she goes into doctor mode and helps save her dad with Tanner [Novlan, who plays] Finn on the show. So it was a really beautiful arc [from head writer] Brad [Bell, also B&B executive producer]…at least on paper, in the script, he wrote a beautiful arc for a lot of people. It really was a beautiful multi-generational storyline that involved a lot of the cast. [It] was really fun for me to get to go back and work with so many people. This is my 20th year on the show, and the character goes way back further than that. So the audience has invested in Bridget and invested in the whole Forrester family and the Logan family.”
How did you find out you were nominated?
“My wonderful publicist Eva called me.”
Did any of the messages that you received stand out?
“What’s very special are the fans that have commented. We have this connection [through] social media now for years when they write either in comments or DMs and say, ‘We thought this was going to happen for you because I haven’t cried that hard or so much than when you found out your dad was dying.’ Or they really would pick a moment they saw last year that they identified with. And this storyline was toward the end of the year last year, and my storyline ended on Christmas Day. So this isn’t that long ago. They remember. It’s still fresh in their memory.”
Did you do anything to celebrate?
“Well, I had a wedding that night with one of my best friends. A bunch of our friends got together with that. But I have talked to all of my fellow castmates, the majority of them, and we are going to all try to celebrate together at some point this week. I think we’re going to figure that out today. And then my lovely producer, Casey [Kasprzyk, Supervising Producer for BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL] quickly brought over a little glass of bubbly before I had to leave for the wedding just to say, this is really fun and cool. And so there was a little, but I plan on [more]. I’m telling you, I don’t know that this will ever happen for me again. So anybody that wants to celebrate, I’m in. I am all about celebrating this fun thing and I get to celebrate it with, honestly, this house is my family. When I’m not on the show, I’m with them all the time. So it’s really a very, very fun experience to go through with them.”
Will anyone in your family be attending?
“That’s a good question. And I’m not sure yet. I would love to bring a family member and we will talk about that soon. Or my agent; I’ve had the same agent since I was 17 years old, and they put me on THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS. It would be a fun thing to bring one of them as well if my family can’t make it out from Texas.”
Any thoughts on your fellow nominees?
“I know — Linden Ashby [Cameron, Y&R]? Amazing. I mean, these are really legends in our business, and I never in a million years thought that my name would be in the same paragraph. I signed up for Google Alerts just to see some different things, and it keeps coming up with ‘Dick Van Dyke, Ashley Jones,’ and I thought, ‘Wow, okay.” It’s okay to take a second and think, ‘Wow, I never thought this would happen.’ It’s a very special moment in time.”
Are you a “prepare a speech” or wing it kind of person?
“It’s one of the harder categories. And so no, I don’t think I’ll be preparing a speech. So if something crazy were to happen, you’d know that it would be out of complete shock because that would be it. I think I can go and have a really good time. And you know what, today, I’m a winner. We’re all winners until June 7th. I do feel like I already won to have my name and that same level of the category with these nominees is extraordinary. And I’m incredibly grateful that this is, I once again, just have to thank Brad. He trusted me. He wrote it, and it’s a really fun thing to be a part of this.”
Will you bring a lucky charm?
“I normally don’t, but now that you’re talking about it, I think I’m going to come up with something. Yeah, I might. What I probably will do is wear my mom’s joy. That’s good. Sometimes I borrow some of the nicer things from my mother. But if I come up with something super special, I’ll find you on the red carpet and let you know.”
How do you feel about B&B’s other nominations?
“I wish more people were nominated! We have 12, which is amazing. We’re a half-hour show, and I think that’s a testament to the storylines that Brad wrote. To our amazing publicist [Eva] and everyone doing their job on the show and doing their job exceptionally well. As a peer, I got to vote in the academy and I voted in the Lead Actress and Lead Actor. So I got two really big categories. So I saw a lot of reels and I got very, very excited for my friends and not just my friends on BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL. I’ve been in the business a long, long time. I’ve been on multiple shows, and it’s very exciting when you can champion people that you think really deserve it. It was a good year for a lot of people…a lot of fun.”
