Favorite B&B Storyline? “I think the revelation when Stephanie admitted that she’d been lying to Eric all those years about Ridge’s paternity, and who Ridge’s father really was. That was a chemical change in the story for Eric — and for me. I had wonderful scenes to play with Susan Flannery [ex-Stephanie], great scenes to play with Ronn Moss, our Ridge in those years, and it’s still something that Ridge and Eric carry with them. It’s always there, and it will never go away; that was the biggest and most favorite. When it comes to a recent favorite storyline, the one that was really dramatic and wonderful for me was Quinn and Ridge almost betraying Eric. They went right to the edge, and their guilt was so huge that they didn’t have to go any further. They couldn’t hide it any longer, with Sheila’s help, of course, so that was a really big story for me.”
JPI
Favorite Thing About Playing The Patriarch? “My favorite thing about that is each kid wants to talk to him. I love our young actors — Jacqui [MacInnes Wood, Steffy]; Scott [Clifton, Liam]; Darin [Brooks, Wyatt], all of them — and I don’t think we do that enough, but I do love that each of the young people comes to him once in a while and wants to talk to him about what’s going on in their lives. I would love us to do more of that. I like the idea that he’s there for advice and for support.”
Favorite Thing About Being A Forrester? “Being rich and having all my suits in some place other than home. Being a Forrester means that they dress me really well. I also love being a Forrester because Eric is treated with affection by all of the characters in his life. I like that for me, too. The Forresters are the core of the show, and I’m proud of that and I revel in that.”
Favorite Thing About Rena Sofer (Quinn)? “Rena is also an extremely professional person. She’s a no-nonsense girl, which can be hard for me because I’m about 90 percent nonsense, but she has learned to tolerate me [laughs]. We’ve never had a hard time, and we were very careful about introducing this relationship to each other and to the viewers. I adore her. I love looking at her face, and I fall into her eyes whenever we work together.”
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Favorite Thing About Thorsten Kaye (Ridge)? “What I love about him is that he’s like me. I like that he had a great reputation before he showed up. I heard all about him from people who had worked with him in New York. Jacob Young [Rick] told me about him. A lot of people knew who he was and what he was like. He also has a great deal of nonsense about him, too, which means fun. He loves this work and he loves to work on it. He brings great concentration to wanting to make everything better every day, and he does it with great humor and fun. I love that about him.”
Favorite Thing About Ingo Rademacher (Thorne)? “He brings all his experience with him, too. He’s a very relaxed guy. He’s more of an outdoors fellow but when it’s time to work, he gets very serious about it. It’s always a surprise to me to see him bear down. I go, ‘Oh, we’re gonna be serious now?’ I’m not as used to him yet as Thorsten, but I admire him and I enjoy him very much. I’m very happy with the two of them. I think they’ve both done a great job at having to take over a new character.”
Favorite Thing About Heather Tom (Katie)? “I keep using the expression ‘no-nonsense,’ but that doesn’t mean that there’s no humor there. Heather has a lovely sense of humor about all of this. She is capable of doing nine things at once, and she often is doing nine things at once! She’s doing post-production on something she directed. She’s raising her son. She’s caring for her husband. She’s shooting a show and she’s memorizing lines for another. She is very involved in the stories that we tell. She spent so many of her young years on Y&R learning how to be a soap opera actress that I think she knows more about being on a soap than almost anybody here.”
Favorite Villain? “The best female villain, of course, was Sheila coming across the hall from Y&R to B&B. She came slinking into our story without anybody knowing who she was and the audience was going, ‘Oh, my God!’ It was really fun. Sheila was evil and still is, if you ask me. For male villains, Bill is a bad guy but unlike Sheila, he’s learning to try to want to be better. That’s a good story to tell because he’s a major character on the show and not someone who comes and goes like Sheila. It’s good that he’s beginning to take responsibility for his actions. That’s an interesting thing to write for a broad-brush character like Dollar Bill, and Don [Diamont, Bill] does a wonderful job with him.”
Favorite Guest Star? “Betty White [ex-Ann], absolutely. She really impressed us all with her work ethic. The first day she went, ‘Oh, my goodness!’ because no one really prepped her about how fast we work and how the first take is usually the one we keep. She has a good sense of humor. She’s smart and, of course, funny and lovely and warm. She was in my dressing room for the time she was here and her first morning, I knocked on the door and opened it quickly as if I didn’t know she was in there and I said, ‘Oh, I thought it was Cloris Leachman,’ and she laughed very big and we got off on a great foot.”
Favorite Prop In The Forrester Living Room? “One of the urns. We have matching urns, two big ones on the fireplace and two medium ones that are on the bar. I always open the top and look down and say, ‘That’s where Stephanie is now.’ ”
Favorite Malady To Play? “Blindness is always an interesting challenge to play for an actor. I liked the last stroke Eric had because it affected his speech for a while, and story-wise, everybody was trying to take over the space that he left. It was great for me and Rena.”
Favorite Fashion Show? “I loved the big ones in the beginning when Miss Sally Spectra would take over and all of a sudden Forrester would flip around and there would be Sally’s face up there. Those competitions were really fun. We used the whole soundstage here for the runway and backstage, instead of the smaller sets that we do now. The ones in the beginning were very glamorous. We had 150 extras instead of four. The fashion show in Lake Como in Italy was quite beautiful. We used wonderful Italian and French models that were from Milan. All of our fashion shows are really a trademark of our show.”
Favorite Scene Partner? “When you go way back to the beginning, it was Stephanie and Eric all those years, and every scene we played had some kind of conflict in it, even if we were sitting and having a nice martini together. There was always an undercurrent of conflict. I remember the first year, the word ‘malaise’ came up in our scripts and in our dialogue almost every episode, because they wanted this ‘malaise’ to be palpable, and it was. I never really cite one scene or one story with Flannery as my favorite, but my favorite thing about the first 25 years on the show was that she and I played Eric and Stephanie’s conflict constantly. That was always so good.”
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Favorite Thing About The Late Darlene Conley (ex-Sally)? “Darlene was the embodiment of show business. When you heard her, you could hear her voice down the hall and you could hear the circus in her voice — and opera and vaudeville and burlesque and musical theater. You could hear it all in her telling a story or complaining about her wig. She always reminded me that yes, I am in show business.”
JPI
Favorite Thing About Working With Executive Producer/Head Writer Bradley Bell? “He’s enigmatic in a very positive way. Brad is cut from the same cloth as his mom and dad [B&B Creators William J. and Lee Phillip Bell]. He’s a professional. He’s the head of a business. He’s the creative head and he’s the real patriarch of the show now. Brad is my friend. He’s my colleague and his loyalty is stunning; that’s a blessing in my life. He’s incredibly generous, and I appreciate him very much.”
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Favorite Thing About Katherine Kelly Lang (Brooke)? “My favorite thing about her is that she is her. She’s bright and shiny. She’s always positive, even when she’s hassled or tired from traveling. She is a positive person. She always knows her dialogue and she works really hard on it all the time. She is more than conscientious. She is absolutely dedicated to playing this part. Even when she was in Italy 12 hours prior, she comes flying in here and always brings Brooke to the floor. I love that about Kelly.”
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