‘The Bold and the Beautiful’: What Happened to Rick and Maya After Their Groundbreaking Storyline?
Daytime television is home to some of the longest-running television shows to ever air. While soap operas often have wildly unbelievable plot lines that include ghosts, multiple faked deaths, and babies switched at birth, there is still a vein of traditionalism running through many of them that is hard to shake. Days of Our Lives, for instance, went more than five decades and many, many on-screen marriage portrayals before showing a wedding of a Black couple on the screen. In recent years, the portrayal of gay and lesbian couples have gotten more common as well.
With showcasing the love of Rick and Maya, The Bold and the Beautiful made history by featuring a transwoman character on the screen. What happened to the couple after that groundbreaking episode?
‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ is a popular spin-off
The Young and the Restless has long been a popular series that focuses on the fictional world of Genoa City and the complicated love lives of the people who live there. The soap opera premiered in 1973 and was popular enough to produce a long-running spinoff. The Bold and the Beautiful started in 1987 and follows two families: the rich Forresters and the poorer Logans as they battle it out for control and power in the Los Angeles fashion world.
The deeply tangled webs between the two families include several marriages, divorces, affairs, and spouses traded back and forth across the group. The rivalries are complex and feature ever-changing alliances, leaving viewers wondering who they can trust and what subterfuge will take place next. The drama has made for interesting viewing for decades.
Rick and Maya’s story was groundbreaking
As Nick Adams, the Director of Transgender Representation at GLAAD, explains, Rick and Maya’s love story was a groundbreaking one for daytime television. Maya (portrayed by actor Karla Mosley) falls in love with Rick Forrester (portrayed by Jacob Young). The road to marriage was anything but easy for the pair, and Rick does not know that Maya is a transgender woman throughout much of their courtship. When Maya’s sister Nicole comes to town, the secret is set to be spilled.
Rick eventually finds out the truth when a salacious magazine article is published revealing Maya’s secret to the world. Maya flees, fearing Rick will not accept her for who she is. When an ill-timed car accident cuts their conversation short, she assumes the worst about Rick’s reaction, but they do eventually reunite and head toward their wedding day with Rick fully accepting Maya. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people on both sides of the family who don’t have the same level of acceptance, and their cruel comments threaten to derail the happy event. After many bumps in the road, Rick and Maya do make it to the altar and say their wedding vows.
What happened next for Rick and Maya?
Rick and Maya’s wedding day was a big deal for transgender representation on daytime television. What happened to the couple after this groundbreaking scene? The pair decide to become parents through surrogacy with Nicole serving as the surrogate for their daughter Elizabeth. Of course, there are very few happily ever afters in the soap opera world, and the new family would soon face rocky times.
Rick and Maya started to have relationship problems, and in 2018, the pair decided to go their separate ways. Maya returned to Los Angeles on her own while Rick stayed in Paris, effectively ending the groundbreaking relationship between these two. The breakup took everyone by surprise, including the actor who portrayed Rick, according to Soap Central. Jacob Young called the split “incredibly sad” and said he was “disappointed” by how it turned out. Young’s time on the show came to an end that same year while Mosley returned to portray Maya in 2019.
