‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ (B&B) spoilers find that fans are very relieved that John McCook didn’t listen to his instincts 34 years ago, or what we watch on our screens every weekday would have a very different look!
‘The Bold’ has just turned 34 and John who plays Eric Forrester is one of only two cast members remaining from the very first episode that aired on CBS on March 23, 1987. Katherine Kelly Lang, (Brooke Logan) is the second.
While John has nothing but praise for the show and his fellow cast mates and the family they’ve created, he admitted that he wasn’t even going to take the meeting with show creator, William Bell!
‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ Spoilers: Original Cast Member John McCook Admits He Didn’t Want to Play the Forrester Patriarch 34 Years Ago
Seven years earlier, John had finished a five year run as playboy Lance Prentiss on Bell’s The Young and the Restless and said “we parted on very good terms.”
So when Bell wanted to cast John as the silver-haired patriarch of the Bold’s central family, John was “on the fence about it. But they kept calling my agent and saying, ‘Bill Bell really wants to see you.’ And I said, ‘for God’s sake, I can’t say no to him!’”
To be gentlemanly, John took the meeting, and suggested he might not be the man Bell wanted when the show’s producer lamented that John hadn’t aged enough in the time the two hadn’t seen each other. But with Bell already having Susan Flannery (Stephanie Forrester) in mind to play opposite John as matriarch Stephanie Forrester, he knew if he cast John, he could build a strong show from there.
Of course, William Bell was right, John just didn’t know how right, thinking the new soap might last five to ten years. Of course, 34 years later the show is a runaway international success!
John is now lovingly looking back, remembering his first day on set, being blown away by the elaborate and now iconic Forrester living room set and suspecting this might be something a little more special than he originally thought.
I guess he sure is glad he was a gentleman to Bell all those years ago!
Watch B&B, now in its 35th year, on CBS, weekdays.
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