Karla Mosley at arrivals for 29th Annual GLAAD Media Awards - Part 2, The Beverly Hilton, Beverly Hills, CA April 12, 2018.
Credit: Priscilla Grant/Courtesy of Everett Collection.

The Bold and the Beautiful alum Karla Mosley (ex-Maya) realized the moment she read the script for her latest film, Tubi’s Deadly Cheer Mom, that this was the project she wanted to take on as her return from maternity leave after having her second child. Why was the role of Marisol so perfect?

“I read the story and I was like, ‘I gotta do this movie,'” she laughs of the the wild ride the storyline takes the viewer on. The movie follows a cheerleader named Beth, who becomes a victim of deep-fake videos with someone “pretending to be her on social media and manipulating her words.”

Even as the high-tech terror is playing out, long-simmering rivalries are simmering in the background. “My daughter is now also a cheerleader, and I feel that she deserves to be captain,” Mosley explains. “So, there were great traditional [issues], but also very real conflicts between these characters, and Marisol doesn’t always handle it in the most tasteful way.”

More: Celebrating LGBTQ+ soap opera characters and couples

Watch The Deadly Cheer Mom Trailer:

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As a mom to daughters Aurora, 3, and Willa, 7 months, Mosley learned some real-life parenting lessons while working on the film that will come into play once her kids are old enough for social media. “Beyond the murder of it all, what is deadly? There is something deadly about what social media can do and what bullying can do,” she ponders. “Of course, we’re all talking about how serious that can be, but when you overstep your line as a parent and you try to live through your child vicariously, that can also be deadly.”

There is, she continues, a fine line. “You don’t want to teach your child to be that competitive, because they forget that there’s an actual human being in front of them.” While Deadly Cheer Mom has its campy moments, there’s also a nugget of truth buried within: A similar real-life case in Pennsylvania recently lead to a harassment conviction!

Mosley loves that daytime audiences are following her and other soap stars to the true-crime thrillers because both genres share “the drama of it all.” She praises the soaps for taking possibly “mundane” characters and putting them into “insane scenarios.” That’s what has her hooked as a performer because she gets to “find the reality in how to ground these wild” moments — just like tricky situations Marisol finds herself in.

For more of our chat with Mosley — including her thoughts on continuing Maya’s storyline on The Bold and the Beautiful — check out the entire interview above. Then visit the photo gallery below in which we count down the all-time best Bold & Beautiful characters.