On “The Bold and the Beautiful,” Carter Walton (Lawrence Saint-Victor) and Steffy Forrester (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) had a drunken one-night stand, which they’ve regretted ever since waking up curled up together on the office couch at Forrester Creations back in August.
Hoping to keep their encounter a secret, the two vowed never to tell their respective spouses, Daphne (Murielle Hilaire) and Finn (Tanner Novlan), but an unexpected twist occurred when Steffy learned she was pregnant. After telling Carter that Finn couldn’t possibly be the father, since the couple hadn’t been intimate in quite some time, the show seemed to be avoiding one of soap’s long-standing storyline tropes: Who’s the Daddy?
With Daphne unable to have kids naturally with Carter, and Finn excluded as the father, a quick-thinking Carter took charge, deciding that their respective marriages shouldn’t be destroyed over their indiscretion, leaving him to believe that the only option to correct course was to pass off their child as one Steffy is choosing to gift her best friend, a move that took time for Steffy to agree to, and one she would take without consulting her husband.
In an exclusive interview with Soap Opera Network, the cast discusses how their deception spirals, with Carter working in “survival mode” trying to save both his marriage and Steffy’s friendship with Daphne through emotional manipulation, presenting surrogacy as Steffy’s only logical choice — and they explore complex emotional territory: Steffy’s desperation and underestimation of what giving up her child would actually mean, Finn’s confusion about his wife’s behavior without suspecting the affair, and Daphne’s reaction when she inevitably learns the truth.
“I think it just upped the stakes because for a little while there, the whole story was don’t tell Finn about the affair, don’t tell Daphne,” says Saint-Victor, speaking on the show’s wild take on the typical soap opera pregnancy storyline. “That just changed the story completely because they can’t just bury this now.”
For Hilaire, it’s too early in the storyline for her to decide how she’ll play Daphne’s reaction to the news that her husband and friend slept together, much less created a child they’re trying to pass off as a donor for her and Carter. “I don’t know what’s going to happen or how she will react to it,” Hilaire conveyed, adding, “Well, it depends on what she wants. I think right now she really wants a baby, and so she’s going to do whatever she can to have that baby. If everything is revealed, I don’t know if she’s going to be able to keep that baby. We’ll see.”
As a mother already, Steffy’s decision to give up a child is one the character hasn’t truly grasped yet, notes Wood. “I don’t think she realizes the magnitude of it. I think she does in a different way, and I think she’s desperate and she’s thinking, ‘Okay, once I give this child up, everything will go back to normal.’ She’s clawing at the walls right now. She’s desperate, but yet she is a mother, and her heart is outside of her body.”
“She loves her children so much. So it’s going to be, I personally think, extremely heartbreaking for her,” continues Wood. “When you go through the surrogacy process, it takes a while. And again, a lot of surrogates in real life, it’s a mindset, and God bless, you can do that. Steffy’s kind of jumping in, thinking, ‘Oh yeah, this will be…’ She knows that there’s no way I can do it, but then she has those moments, ‘Oh yes, I can do it.’ But I think once she has that child and she looks at the baby in the eyes, it’s going to be very difficult for her to give up her own child; with the hormones, with the baby’s smell, everything will be extremely difficult.
“So this storyline can go switch every which way. We don’t know. There’s many possibilities and I know there’s many rabbit holes and I’m down to go down two because I’m still figuring out what’s happening next. But yeah, it’s going to be extremely hard. She’s just at this moment; she’s just desperate. She’s desperate to just close this chapter.”
While Finn generally supports his wife in everything she does, her decision to move forward with having another man’s child through surrogacy in support of her best friend without consulting him first is something out of character for Steffy, so he’s concerned about what’s going on with his wife.
“I don’t think he’s mad she did it,” Novlan says, sharing, “Yes, his wife is acting out of character. If this was a gift to Daphne and Carter, why isn’t she more happy about it?”
Getting into his character’s headspace, Novlan notes, “He’s still unpacking [everything]. He knows, obviously, something’s wrong, and he’s trying to figure out why she’s under so much mental stress. Obviously, this pairing [Carter and Steffy], them hooking [up], it doesn’t even cross his mind because they’re friends. He would never think that. And so yeah, he definitely understands that something’s wrong with his wife, but he knows that she loves him and he loves her, but there’s something else going on that he can’t quite figure out yet.”
Saint-Victor, who also serves as one of the show’s writers and is nominated this year for two Daytime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Daytime Drama Series: Actor and Outstanding Writing Team for a Daytime Drama Series, explains how Carter is trying to fix things.
“Carter’s in survival mode. He’s not even thinking about his own feelings at this point,” shares Saint-Victor. “He’s like, ‘There’s only one way out that keeps everything intact, and you have a choice, Steffy. You can be our surrogate and give up your baby or tell the truth and split your home apart. Which one do you want? I can lose my job. We can be a laughingstock in our business, or we can carry the burden of this life and keep everyone else happy.’ And he doesn’t see any other option here. For him, it’s like a no-brainer. So yeah, he doesn’t see himself as being pushy. He’s in lawyer mode. That’s what he does. He breaks down the argument, he gives it to her as clearly as possible, and he will keep saying it over and over again. He’s giving his disposition to her.”
To some, Carter’s thinking can come off as a little villainy, but for Saint-Victor, he believes Carter “doesn’t have an or else. So part of him still is, and we had this beautiful scene – one of our first scenes, Jackie, where Steffy says, ‘No, we’re not doing it.’ And Carter cries because he doesn’t have an or else. He’s like, ‘All I can do is convince you and reason with you, but I can’t force you. I don’t have anywhere to…’ He can’t blackmail her. So for him, all he has is logic and reason. If I can get you to see the light, then maybe we’ll survive.”
As the storyline progresses, one thing is certain: the friendship between Steffy and Daphne is on the line. “I think Steffy deep down knows that she’s going to lose her best friend. Her sister; they’ve known each other for years. I really don’t think that she’ll be able to get past this,” reveals Wood, referring to Daphne. “She’s really struggling with that. But now, knowing that they’ve been lying for so long and they’re just leaning in even more, and it’s getting really dark and twisted and pulling the ripcord now, it would be extremely tough if that’s when she knows if she were to do that, she would be losing her best friend. Before, maybe it would be tough, and I think she could potentially have lost her friend then, but now it’s like there’s no way their friendship would be over.”
Check out our full interview with the cast below.
