Jack Wagner Previews His ‘Jaw-Dropping’ Bold And Beautiful Return (Exclusive)

With Jack Wagner returning to Bold and Beautiful as Nick Marone beginning with the episode airing on Monday, June 16, Soap Opera Digest chatted with the veteran actor to get the scoop on his daytime comeback and what viewers can expect from his summer storyline. Wagner — who was already mega-famous in the soap world, having played Frisco Jones on General Hospital and Peter Burns on Melrose Place — first joined the cast of B&B in March 2003 and remained with the show until February 2012. While the actor did return for the soap’s 35th anniversary episode in 2022, Nick’s appearance was only in Brooke’s (Katherine Kelly Lang) mind as she imagined her past lovers. This time, Nick is back in the flesh, so it’s a whole different ballgame.

Back to Business

“It’s very, very different than just a one-day kind of, ‘How you doing?’ ” Wagner proclaims of this lengthier run. “I described this as jumping on a moving train — like, a class reunion for 10 minutes, and then jump on the moving train. Still, I love to work that way. To be back on The Bold and The Beautiful, I realized [with] nighttime television, we have the luxury of much more time, even though it’s still pretty quick. But on daytime now, it is really a moving train. It’s a locomotive. So I realized how much I love to work that way,” he continues, “especially when I’m working with [Katherine] Kelly [Lang], who likes to rehearse.”

The actor has his love of a particular sport to thank for this particular return to the soap he called home for nearly a decade. Wagner reports, “I ran into [B&B Executive Producer and Head Writer] Brad Bell at the golf course about six months ago and said, ‘Hey man, I’m going to Italy in the summer. You want me to do any press for the show? I know I haven’t been on in a while.’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, that sounds great.’ “

Much to Wagner’s surprise, the actor recounts, Bell “calls about six weeks later — because I have this window of time [before] I go back to When Calls the Heart, the series I’m on on the Hallmark Channel — so he goes, ‘Do you think you have time to do a summer story arc on The Bold and The Beautiful? I have an idea. We can finish shooting in Naples because Nick would run Marone shipping by then.’ And I’m, like, going, ‘Okay!’ ”

Wagner also worked closely with Bell to ensure that Nick’s return — while unavoidably brief, due to the actor’s prime-time commitments — would be effective, which deeply mattered to him “in terms of wanting to make the proper impact,” as he puts it, “and to make sure that the focus is on his main objective. And that is to wake Brooke up from this toxic pattern with Ridge Forrester and to win her heart. That’s it. That’s the objective. And so I was clear on that, which gave me a lot of layers to play.”

A Whole New Nick

Fans can also look forward to seeing a very different Nick Marone than the man who sailed off on his boat, The Shady Marlin, over 13 years ago. “He’s advanced in the shipping world and now runs Marone Shipping, and I would call him a shipping tycoon,” Wagner previews. “He’s a very wealthy man. He’s an international, world-traveling shipping tycoon businessman.”

With that boost in his credit score comes a new confidence. “I thought the key for him was to be fearless — that was the key to the storyline working,” Wagner asserts. “So when Ridge [Thorsten Kaye] would enter and there’d be any kind of butting heads, I treated it as though there was a fly on Nick’s shoulder,” he adds with a chuckle. “It gave us a lot of comedy because Ridge isn’t used to being treated that way. So the things that I improvised and did were a little shocking, but I think it fed into the rivalry as well as battling for Brooke’s love.”

For the actor, revisiting his B&B role was a nice change of pace from his When Calls the Heart character, pioneer town patriarch Bill Avery. “It was so much fun for me,” Wagner enthuses. “I played this man confident, which gave me the ability to be fun-loving with Brooke, to be charming with her, and then also to pick times where it’s very poignant and intimate and direct and truthful. So she really had to confront herself, and I think that was the key to their being a possibility, by the time I leave, [of a] shift [within Brooke], that she wakes up and sees, like, ‘Wow, I’m going nowhere with Ridge, and maybe Nick is my future.’ That was really the goal here.”

Coming Home Again

Wagner calls being able to work with Lang again “fantastic” and appreciated being able to share scenes with her once more. “I just love Kelly,” he declares. “I love her as a human being. I also love her work ethic and her commitment, and she’s also a lovely person. It makes a big difference.

“I always want to lean into the masculinity of this character, Nick,” the actor continues. “I want him to be this very driven, secure, masculine character in that he’s decisive. He’s not wishy-washy and back and forth like Ridge. So that was the key for me in playing him. And from that, I get to do some comedy and some playfulness with her. And is there time to give her an embracing kiss or a peck on the cheek? All of those layers that I felt were important that the audience saw she had to deal with. She’s got to negotiate this guy who’s coming in like a storm, but look at him. Look at what he’s laying out there. It’s not what Ridge is laying out.”

Wagner’s summer arc on B&B will climax with the dramatic action taking place during the episodes shot on location in Italy, but the way things wrap up leaves the door wide open for Nick to return again the next time the actor has some room in his schedule.

“Brad and I talked about it,” he reveals. “Bold and the Beautiful got a three-year pickup. I think for him, he sees an opportunity here to have this be a first chapter, potentially, for the Nick and Brooke characters. So the script I got today… It’s like, a little jaw-dropping, this cliffhanger. I love that Brad wrote it because it’s really great. So I think there’s potential for Nick to have life on B&B, especially coming back to win Brooke back.”