Bold & Beautiful’s Tanner Novlan Spills Secrets From the Set — Including the Coupling That Had to Be Shut Down Before It Started Up!
Finn is “my buddy, he’s my friend, he’s with me, but… ”
In the latest installment of Directionally Challenged, the podcast co-hosted by Candice King and Bold & Beautiful alum Kayla Ewell (ex-Caitlin), the actress welcomed a guest that she knows especially well: husband Tanner Novlan, who of course plays Finn. And he was only too happy to dish about what life was like these days on the soap set.
For starters, he observed that because Bold & Beautiful is a half-hour show, its cast is smaller than those of the other daytime dramas. As a result, “there’s a lotta mixing and matching” of on-screen lovers. And the regulars are used to it. Maybe even too used to it?
Novlan recalled an instance in which his leading lady Jacqueline MacInnes Wood (Steffy) “was in a scene, and she was kinda making some eyes at Zende, and then Ed Scott, who’s the showrunner, comes on over the loudspeaker and goes, ‘Jacqui, that’s your cousin.’ And she was, ‘Oh. Is he?’”
Above: You can make your own kissin’-cousins joke here.
Credit: Howard Wise/JPI (2)
More: Bold & Beautiful stars make bash out of this world
Not by blood, but yeah… kinda. Novlan understood Wood’s confusion completely; he’s experienced it firsthand. Since none of the cast know where the story is going — and it can change on a dime — “it’s really tricky for an actor to give your character a spine and be like, ‘These are his morals,’ because they’re always in question.”
On the flip side, that’s what makes the show so exciting. “You just never know what’s gonna happen next,” he said.
Above: Gonna go out on a limb and guess that Novlan’s all-time favorite interviewer is… his wife.
Credit: Howard Wise/JPI
Asked whether he had picked up any nuggets of wisdom from his alter ego, Novlan paused thoughtfully and then replied with a laugh, “No. Here’s the thing with Dr. John Finnegan: He’s my buddy, he’s my friend, he’s with me, but he does a lot of stupid things that he really shouldn’t be doing.”
Take what he did in Monday’s episode, for instance. Whereas Hope reacted to Deacon and Sheila’s insta-romance with an eye roll, Finn looked kinda-sorta ready to swallow the line of bull and ask for seconds. But no matter how “WTH?” the twist of plot, “you really have to believe it as an actor,” he said. “That’s the tricky part, because some of the ideas seem a little crazy, but we deliver them in the most honest way possible… and it ends up being fun at the end of the day.”
That it does. That it does. While you’re here, check out photos of Novlan, Ewell and more Bold & Beautiful stars and their real-life partners in the photo gallery below.
