Howard Wise/jpistudios.com
Intimate Portrait: Luna (Lisa Yamada) and R.J. (Joshua Hoffman) take their relationship to the next level.
Luna and R.J. wake up together after consummating their relationship, and their night of passion has only brought them closer. Notes Lisa Yamada (Luna), “I think there’s a new form of trust there. Obviously, when you share something like that with someone there, there’s like a bond that you’ll always have. The love between them is getting deeper after the deed has been done. I think that’s the case with everyone, but especially with Luna, who is not very experienced in that field. It’s new feelings for her and I think she’s growing deeper and deeper in love with R.J.”
This is also a milestone moment in Luna’s life, given her lack of sexual experience. “Luna feels like she is in a huge transition phase in her life,” her portrayer muses. “She moved to L.A. on her own, she got her first boyfriend and she loses her virginity to him — there are just a lot of firsts happening in her life. So I think it is a little bit overwhelming for her, but not in a bad way. It’s like she’s full of all these emotions that are all good, but so many things are happening at once and I think she’s juggling all these euphoric feelings.”
Yamada feels that the timing was right for Luna to take this intimate leap forward with R.J. “With her moving to L.A. and starting this new chapter in her life, I think she’s gotten used to having new experiences in life and meeting such a sweet boy like R.J. has made her feel more comfortable. She’s loosening up and she’s falling in love for the first time and it’s really cute to see! I know we’re not teenagers on the show, but it feels like a teenage, high school type [of love], like puppy love.”
Though the couple has exchanged “I love you’s” in the past, when R.J. sweetly reaffirms his feelings as they bask in the aftermath of their lovemaking and Luna responds in kind, “We are reiterating that we love each other, but it’s in a new way, if that make sense. We talk about how we loved each other before, but now we are finding this new sense of trust within each other and we’ll always have each other.”
As Luna lies blissfully in R.J.’s arms, she feels a million miles away from the sources of trouble in her life — namely, the unresolved conflicts in her family and the dangling mystery of her true origins. Points out Yamada, “She hasn’t hashed everything out with the whole Li dynamic, so I’m sure that’s, you know, in the back of her mind somewhere. She’s in a very happy place right now, but there are some things that need to be resolved, especially like she still doesn’t know who her father is and she hasn’t figured out this whole relationship with Li, and Li not being accepting of her being with R.J. and being at Forrester. So it’s not all sunshine and rainbows for her just yet!”
In light of these things happening in the background, Luna is particularly appreciative of the support system and partner that R.J. is proving to be. “I think that’s a big reason why they have such a strong connection,” Yamada says. “Luna was there for R.J. when we were dealing with Eric and now R.J. gets to be there for Luna while she figures out her relationship with Lee and her paternity troubles. They’re leaning on each other and they’re each other’s shoulders to cry on. That is one of the biggest reasons why they’re so in love with each other.”
Yamada admits that she had some nerves in advance of filming a love scene, which she’d never done before. “The last show that I was on, I had my first on-screen kiss,” she shares. “So that, I was like, ‘I’ve got it figured out!’ But this was my first lovemaking/sex scene, so I was really nervous. But everyone on THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, they’re so accommodating and especially our costume designer, when I was doing the fitting, she made sure that I was comfortable with what I was wearing and I told her my boundaries, like what I didn’t want to show and what I was comfortable with showing and things like that. And it was also a closed set. So, I felt nervous because it was my first time doing it, but I never felt uncomfortable. And once I did it, I was like, ‘Okay, it’s not a big deal!’ It’s just another learning curve.”
