INTERVIEW
The Inside Story of Bold and Beautiful’s Last-Minute Liam Save, As Told By Scott Clifton (Exclusive)
This past spring, when Scott Clifton got on the phone with Soap Opera Digest to discuss Liam’s fatal brain tumor diagnosis, the Daytime Emmy-winning actor was fully expecting to be leaving Bold and Beautiful, his daytime home since 2010, at the conclusion of the storyline. But as viewers know, that is not what ultimately happened: Liam — and, by extension, Clifton — got an 11th-hour reprieve from Clifton’s boss, Executive Producer/Head Writer Bradley Bell.
Brain Teaser
The story of Liam’s death sentence and its reversal had actually begun several months earlier, when Liam became more of a supporting character on the canvas than he had been during the years that Liam’s love triangle with Hope Logan and Steffy Forrester propelled front-burning story. During that time frame, Clifton shared with Digest, “Brad was really honest and generous with me and we had a conversation where he told me he felt that Liam had been written into a corner. He said, ‘Liam has gotten married and divorced so many times and he’s sort of ping-ponged back and forth between these two women [Hope and Steffy] so many times and I don’t know where to go from here. But please know that I still value you as an employee and an actor.’
“I so appreciated that,” the actor continued, “because he was so honest about it, and I mean, it was something that I had worried about for at least the last decade! Like, ‘There’s no way this is sustainable, right? This guy just going back and forth between these two women and never learning his lesson and becoming more and more unlikable to the point where you can’t just say about the character that his heart was in the right place?’ I totally got where Brad was coming from.”
So, when Bell eventually made the decision to script that inoperable brain tumor, it didn’t come as a huge shock to Clifton — and once again, he heard the news straight from Bell. Revealed Clifton, “Brad was kind enough to call me into his office and sit me down and have a whole conversation with me about why he was [killing Liam off],” he shared. “He was a total prince about it. He was like, ‘I love working with you and you’re an asset to the show, but I’ve figured out what I want to do with Liam.'” After Bell filled him in on the tumor storyline, “He said that he didn’t want to waste Liam and so it seemed like the best way to honor the character without squandering him was to give him this sort of really poignant send-off.”
While this wasn’t the news Clifton was hoping to get, he said at the time that he was “still really excited about this storyline and really honored to be trusted with it. It’s a big swan song of sorts. As sad as I am to potentially not be able to go to my place of work anymore, a place that I love with all the people that become my family, Brad wanted this to have an impact and to have ripples throughout the rest of the show, and I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful to Brad for having enough faith in me to pull this [story] off.”
Clifton acknowledged that as his days on the show appeared to be numbered, he was feeling “a sort of looming sense of loss” as he faced the prospect of sharing his last scenes with longtime co-stars like Don Diamont (Bill), Annika Noelle (Hope) and Jacqueline MacInnes Wood (Steffy). Anticipating shooting Liam’s death, he mused, “I think it won’t be too much of a stretch to play those scenes where the characters are kind of saying good-bye to each other, because in a sense, we [the actors] will be saying good-bye. I think it will make the scenes feel more authentic and cathartic, even.”
A New Lease on Life
Of course, those scenes never came to pass, and by the time Digest connected with Clifton a few months later — this time in conjunction with the dramatic story beat that saw Liam take a bullet courtesy of a deranged Luna — the actor knew that Liam would be getting a classic soap opera miracle, after all. Not only that, but the show would establish that Liam was never at risk of dying at all! Rather, a desperate Dr. Grace Buckingham had fudged his brain scans to make it appear as though he was doomed as part of an elaborate plan to extort his mega-wealthy pop, Bill Spencer, for a million dollars. Bill handed over the money to fund what he thought was an experimental treatment that might save his son, when really, she needed the cash to settle her incarcerated ex Reese’s gambling debts.
Reflecting on that original conversation, Clifton marveled, “I had every reason to believe that they really were going to kill me off on the show. It was a very real conversation that I had with Brad — I really was supposed to kick the old soap opera bucket.
“I don’t know exactly what it was that changed his mind,” he continued, “but I got a phone call at home from Mr. Bell and he said, ‘You know what? I changed my mind. I’m going to figure out a way to [spare Liam]. I have this idea, and it has to do with Luna and tying these two different storylines together. I think I’m going to shoot you.’ And I was like, ‘Well, thanks. That doesn’t sound a whole lot better!’ And he goes, ‘No, no, no, not like that — Liam’s going to take a bullet, but we’re not going to kill you.’ And I went, ‘Ohhhhh.’ He said, ‘I can’t do it the same way I did it with John McCook,” whose character, Eric, got his own miracle reprieve with a sudden recovery from the illness that made him appear marked for the great beyond back in 2023, “‘but I think I want to have Luna shoot you and have these two storylines combine, and then I’ll figure out a good way to save you.'”
Clifton admitted that “at the time that [phone conversation] happened, I thought he was just sort of thinking out loud. I was so thrilled to be employed again, but I was kind of going, ‘How on earth are you gonna pull this off? I mean, yes, it’s a soap opera, but you have established beyond any question that this dude is dying!’ But sure enough, he figured out this very complex, elaborate way to save Liam! And less than a week later, I got the script” in which Luna shot Liam, and within weeks, Grace’s scheme was exposed and Liam was back in the land of the living.
Alive and Well
The actor saw the ricochet from “Liam is dying” to “Liam is not dying” as “having my cake and eating it too,” as he put it. “I had really resigned myself [to leaving the show]. I mean, I wasn’t gonna worry about [finding] work until after I had finished my job at The Bold and the Beautiful; I didn’t want to think too far ahead. I didn’t want to think about [landing on] other soap operas. I didn’t want to think about auditioning again. I just wanted to do the best job I could with the storyline. And then to learn that I would actually get to keep my job? It was like the best of both worlds.”
The actor was initially worried that the new storyline direction would undo some of the progress Bell had made in Liam’s evolution. He explained, “Liam was going to die not a hero, but sympathetically. The character had made all these poor choices for all these years, and [his attempts to make amends with his loved ones before he passed] was a kind of way of redeeming the character before sending him off. I really, really appreciated that and I really loved that as a conclusion to the character. If it ended up being this like big fake-out, the worry is it kind of like robs the audience — and even me, the actor — of those sort of conclusive moments, that kind of finale for the character.”
But, he marveled, when he intersected Liam’s story with Luna’s, “Brad just kind of like did this magician-like switcheroo thing where Liam still became kind of a martyr. He still got shot and there was still this big, dramatic story beat that we got to have that had nothing to do with the illness and then dealing with the illness after the fact. I don’t know, I thought it was just a really interesting, not typical way of telling stories that was intricate without being over-complicated. It was really clever how he did it and I was kind of relieved that I still got to have these really wonderful moments to play. There were some moments that weren’t on the table anymore, like the deathbed good-bye speech and that kind of stuff, of course.”
Not that he was complaining! Grinned Clifton, “I would trade 100 good-bye deathbed speeches for an ongoing career! So I’m pretty damn grateful. I’m grateful to Brad and grateful to the show and grateful to get to stick around and hopefully help him tell some more great stories.”
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