The Bold and the Beautiful is now using female blowup dolls for sex scenes in order to adhere to state, county, and industry protocols in the coronavirus era of TV production.
“When we were reviewing the scripts we started taking out all the romantic scenes and [the scripts] just fell flat,” said the show’s executive producer and head writer Bradley Bell to New York Post. “We put our heads together trying to figure out a way to make these scenes work without breaking the eight-foot [distancing] rule — and we brought out a doll we used years ago as a corpse,” he added. “We posed it and it was very convincing. It’s a great doll and we’ll be using her with hair and makeup as a stand-in to match some of our leading ladies.”
While there is currently just one doll being used for the new episodes, Bell says the show “may be employing a lot of dolls in future love scenes.”
“We’re going to see how it works,” Bell said. “We may be investing in more dolls and male dolls. We’re searching Web sites and combing Hollywood to see what’s available — so we may be employing a lot of dolls in future love scenes.”
The Bold and The Beautiful became the first network scripted show to restart shooting after filming was shutdown industry-wide in March as the Chinese coronavirus grind industry around the world to a halt.
Bell added that another idea they came up with was using the real-life spouses of the show’s actors.
“We had the idea that, if [the actors] can’t touch one another and you can’t see them in a tight embrace then that’s a real problem. So we thought to reach out to some of the husbands and wives of the actors and ask them if they would be body doubles in the kissing scenes,” Bell said. “Some of them were interested. We’ve had stunt doubles before but this is the first time we’ve had kissing doubles.”
The producer went on to say that if any husbands or wives are used for the show, they’ll be tested for the Wuhan coronavirus, “and we’ll make sure it’s safe and the husband and wife are comfortable kissing. And so we may have some very hot kissing on the show. With camera tricks and editing, it will appear as though it’s our leading man with his leading lady.”
And who knows, maybe the real-life husband and wives of actors being called in for love scenes will be a new protocol in the era of the Chinese coronavirus — as it appears to be either that, or blowup sex dolls.
“All actors are wearing masks unless they’re shooting scenes — they will always be a minimum of eight feet apart,” added Bell of what it’s now like on set at the production studio.
Bell says that the show is “exercising extreme caution” and taking every precaution to adhere to the new state, county, and industry guidelines in the wake of the Wuhan coronavirus.
“We’ll have a limited number of people on the stage at any time and we’ve reconfigured our control booth,” said Bell. “We’re separating the directors, who will all be six feet apart with plexiglass between them and we’ve moved our lighting crew to an auxiliary room and separated them with plexiglass.”
“We’ve gone through all the scripts and have trimmed some scenes,” he added. “There won’t be any group scenes and the majority [of scenes] will be with two actors and occasionally one actor.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.