Social distancing can be challenging on any film or TV set, but especially on the set of a soap opera where physical displays of affection and intimacy are integral to its storytelling.
Long-running US soap opera The Bold And The Beautiful found some creative solutions to navigate this problem when it resumed production for the first time in over three months on June 17.
“When we were reviewing the scripts, we started taking out all the romantic scenes and (the scripts) just fell flat, ” the show’s executive producer and head writer Bradley Bell tells NY Post.
“We put our heads together trying to figure out a way to make these scenes work without breaking the 2.4m (distancing) rule... and we brought out a doll we used years ago as a corpse."
Bell says having the doll as a scene partner during intimate moments not only ensures the safety of the cast but has produced rather convincing results.
“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.”
Besides the use of dolls, Bell shares with The Hollywood Reporter the show will be getting some help from the casts' real-life significant others.
"We're also bringing in, in some cases, the husbands and wives of the actors as stand-ins for their (characters') significant others.
"So if you see hands touching faces in close proximity from a wide shot, instead of a stunt double we'll have a love-scene double, where it will be the husband or the wife doing the actual touching. Then when we edit it together, it will look like our couple on screen."
The Bold And The Beautiful first aired in 1987 and has since churned out over 8,000 episodes to date. It is now in its 33rd season.
Kudos to @katherinekellylang for her #DaytimeEmmys nomination! Check out just a few of her greatest B&B moments of the year, and wish her good luck below. See her big night this Friday, June 26th at 8/7c on @cbstv and @cbsallaccess! A post shared by The Bold and The Beautiful (@boldandbeautifulcbs) on Jun 23, 2020 at 11:03am PDT
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