The Bold and the Beautiful came up with an unprecedented way to mark Heather Tom’s 35th anniversary on the CBS sudser.
The actress who plays Katie Logan Spencer will act, write and direct an all-female episode of the daytime drama — a first for the genre. Slated to air March 27, the Women’s History Month-themed episode will star Rebecca Budig (Taylor), Annika Noelle (Hope), Katherine Kelly Lang (Brooke), Jennifer Gareis (Donna), Jacqueline MacInnes Wood (Steffy) and Tom herself.
“Brad Bell actually came to me and said, ‘this is your 35th year. You’ve been writing and directing. You’ve also been acting the whole time, and I think that it would be amazing if you did all three in one show,’” Tom, a six-time Daytime Emmy winner, tells Deadline. “I was like, oh, that’ll be interesting! So logistically it was just, well, let’s figure out how I can be on stage acting in the scenes and then directing those scenes. I thought it was very important and agree that it should air during Women’s History Month because it’s historical. It’s never been done on daytime, and it’s only happened maybe two times across any television platform. So it is historic.”
The 18-minute episode (that’s how short it is with all those commercials) will focus on mother and daughter relationships. To keep consistent with the day’s theme, the episode also features a female stage manager, a female assistant director and female editors. (Tom considered throwing a wig on the one male producer but thought better of it).
“The mother daughter relationships are so interesting to me and so formative,” says Tom. “And now this is going to make me cry because I lost my mother last year. I wanted to kind of pay homage to her because I certainly wouldn’t be here without her literally and figuratively. So I got a little bit of her in there with Katie and Donna, who are sisters who lost their mom.”
The episode that featured 45 pages of dialogue was shot all in one day in February. And despite its themes, it’s not considered a standalone episode.
“It does fit within the story of where they are in the series,” says Tom. “We considered doing something that was more of a standalone, but Brad felt, and I agreed that it needed to just kind of flow with the story and it made sense.”
Tom, who will continue to work as a multi-hyphenate on the show she’s called home since 2007, was humbled by the reaction to the episode. “I think everyone was really excited about it. And that’s the other thing about this show. When I first started doing this, I was like, gosh, am I going to have pushback? Are people going to be like, ‘what the heck is going on?’ But everyone has been so supportive.”
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