CBS ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ (B&B) and CBS ‘The Young and the Restless’ (Y&R) spoilers indicate that soaps are going back to work but unfortunately, filming won’t be the same compared to how they last left their studio sets. Now that the state of California has given the Hollywood and entertainment industry the greenlight to go back to work, the daytime television soaps can finally get going on filming new episodes, but with a few new rules and modifications to help keep the cast and crew as safe as possible with social distancing kept in mind. Here’s what you need to know.
With Covid-19 still very much a threat, the soap world will have to make some adjustments to the way they film now and until a new vaccine is made available. The new guidelines include: All employees are required to wear cloth face coverings whenever they are in contact with others, unless — as in the case with actors — the production activity does not allow for the wearing of a face covering. Any latter such instances “should be of short duration and with as much physical distancing as possible,” though ideally “a minimum of 8 feet … during rehearsal or performance.”
CBS ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ and CBS ‘The Young and the Restless’ Spoilers: B&B and Y&R Go Back To Work: Check Out The New Soap Filming Guidelines
Any scenes requiring cast or crew to be closer than 6 feet must be as brief as possible and cast must be as silent as possible to avoid spreading droplets through talking. Scenes with direct prolonged physical contact between cast (intimate scenes, fight scenes) are discouraged at this time. All cast shall wash or sanitize hands when beginning the filming of a scene and not touch their face during the filming session.
Large crowd scenes should be avoided. Hair and makeup services “should be limited only to cast that require it and cannot do it themselves.” Symptom checks are conducted before employees may enter the workspace. Studio audience members can include paid staff, and must be seated at least 6 feet from each other and wear face coverings whenever feasible. Audiences should be limited to 100 people or 25 percent of the maximum occupancy of the space (whichever is smaller).
There must be regular, periodic testing of the cast and crew on a given production to mitigate the risk of the spread of COVID-19, especially for those cast and crew that are involved in high risk scenes requiring close contact without face coverings for extended periods of time. Each production must assign a COVID-19 Compliance Officer or Officers, responsible for establishing and enforcing safety protocols.
Of course, it didn’t take very long for fans to respond to these new set of rules. Some comments from social media followers included, “Wow that’s a lot. I don’t understand how they’re supposed to film scenes when they can get close to each other. Surely there’s a safer and more productive way to keep actors safe and also not compromise the art,” along with, “I mean…I get the point of these guidelines, I do, but this sounds like it’ll make filming in general VERY difficult. They won’t really be able to do….anything in scenes for certain shows and it’s going to heavily affects the upcoming seasons for certain shows.”
Another television fan offered this, “That’s stupid since healthy people don’t get the virus and if by some tiny chance they do, they recover. I only wear a mask in a store where I’m forced to and I don’t do the social distancing thing and I’m fine. Everything should just go back to how it was. This is basically a bad flu.”
So far CBS has not confirmed or denied whether or not ‘Young and the Restless’ and ‘Bold and the Beautiful’ will indeed be filming again this week. However, B&B star Katherine Kelly Lang (Brooke Logan) did hint during an Instagram Live Q&A session that the cast and crew are on target to be back in the studios by this week, but that’s only if everyone passes their Covid-19 tests. We will definitely update you with all of the latest information as it comes in.
In the meantime, let us know what you think by leaving us a line with your thoughts in our comments section below. And as always, don’t forget to check back with Daily Soap Dish for all the latest news, updates and spoilers on ‘Bold and the Beautiful’, ‘Young and the Restless’, ‘General Hospital’ and ‘Days of Our Lives’. For more royal and celeb baby news, come back to Celeb Baby Laundry.