‘The Bold and the Beautiful’: Was Matthew Atkinson Nervous About Acting Opposite a Mannequin?
It’s the scariest story on daytime television in a while! Those red eyes on a Hope Logan mannequin kept by Thomas Forrester are definitely keeping The Bold and the Beautiful viewers up at night. While the mannequin may be frightening to some viewers, Matthew Atkinson (who plays Thomas) wasn’t that phased when he found out that he would be taking the character through some intense scenes while acting next to an inanimate object.
Thomas Forrester is going through a lot on ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ right now
Though it looked like Thomas was doing better, he’s actually going down a mischievous and dangerous path. Liam Spencer caught him with a mannequin that looks just like Hope. While Thomas’ sister Steffy, Hope, and Dr. John “Finn” Finnegan are shrugging it off, Liam says that they need to be taking it seriously.
What Matthew Atkinson says about the mannequin and more
While some actors may have been hesitant to act with a mannequin, Atkinson wasn’t at all. In a new interview with Soap Opera Digest, he talked about the storyline as well as his new scene partner.
“I wasn’t nervous or trepidatious about it,” the actor said when asked about working with the mannequin. “First of all, Thomas has been acting kind of crazy since he came back to town, so let him go crazy. He’s been going down that path for a while now, so it fits.”
The actor also noted that a soap opera is one of the few mediums that can even tell a story like this on television.
“Usually when you have something this dark or quirky, you’re telling it within the confines of a feature film or a play, so you have restrictions from start to finish and you get immersed in that world,” he explained. “But that’s the magic of soap operas because you’re able to tell these interesting stories for months at a time. You could bring aliens into the storyline. You could bring whatever you want because it’s an open forum. Anything could happen in this world — and does!”
Matthew Atkinson of using the mannequins due to the pandemic
The Bold and the Beautiful head writer and executive producer Brad Bell gave several interviews that went viral when he revealed that the show would be utilizing mannequins in intimate scenes due to production restrictions amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
The mannequins were intended to be a replacement for bodies and not intended to be actually incorporated in the scene. But with The Bold and the Beautiful they took it there and has a mannequin as a real part of the scenes. Was Thomas interacting with an actual mannequin always a part of the plan or did Bell think of this after his remarks started to gain traction? Atkinson suggests that it could be both.
“I don’t know if that’s where the idea came from but it’s been in the news since the shows have come back, and it got people talking,” said Atkinson. “I think maybe Brad saw how interested people got and considering how we’re trying to make movie magic right now, they decided to throw it into the storyline, which is really fun. It’s cool that, in a very different way, we’re exploring this new world that we’re living in.”
The Bold and the Beautiful airs weekdays on CBS.
