Howard Wise/jpistudios.com
Make New Friends, But Keep The Old: Rebecca Budig (l.) on the B&B set with Thorsten Kaye (Ridge) and Katherine Kelly Lang (Brooke).
Rebecca Budig made her Bold and Beautiful debut last month as Dr. Taylor Hayes, and thus far, she’s having a picture-perfect entry into her fourth soap role (the actress previously played Guiding Light‘s Michelle Bauer, All My Children‘s Greenlee Smythe and General Hospital‘s Hayden Barnes).
Welcome Aboard
“I feel like I’m in a dream world!” exclaims the actress. “It just feels so unbelievable here! The people are so kind and so nice and it has such a family feeling, and Brad [Bell, head writer/executive producer] couldn’t be more adorable or sweet.”
Going into the role, Budig knew she would be working closely with Taylor’s ex, Ridge Forrester, played by Thorsten Kaye, who she crossed paths with at AMC, where he played Zach Slater, the husband of Greenlee’s frenemy, Kendall Hart Slater. Both Budig and Kaye are still close with Kendall’s portrayer, Alicia Minshew, who was thrilled to find out that her pals were reuniting on B&B. “I don’t remember if it was me who told her or if it was Thorsten, but she was super-excited,” Budig reports. “She loves Thorsten and she worked with him for so many years, and they’re still very, very good friends. But I never really got to work with him; we were more in group scenes together, him and Alicia and me and Cameron [Mathison, GH’s Drew Quartermaine, who played Greenlee’s husband, Ryan Lavery, on AMC]. Still, it helped to know someone before I got here.” Working with him has lived up to expectations. “He is so good,” she praises. “And I feel so comfortable and safe with him on set. It’s been great!”
But as it turned out, Budig didn’t need to rely too heavily on her prior connection to Kaye, because, she marvels, “Everyone was so warm and welcoming when I came in that it just felt so easy. They just all made it feel so seamless for me.” And that was even before she actually started work on the show. “Let me tell you something about John McCook [Eric],” Budig declares. “Seriously, Donna had better watch out, because I’m coming for Eric [laughs]! So, John McCook texted me — I think I had just gotten the job like two days prior or something like that, and he texted me and said, ‘Hi, Rebecca, this is John McCook. We haven’t met yet and I will meet you soon, but I just wanted to welcome you to the show and tell you that this is the best show to be on in all of Los Angeles. You will find such a wonderful group of people in our family.’ I just thought that was so amazing! I mean, I love him. So, he welcomed me by text, and then, there’s a grand piano that sits in the halls of the studio and I walked out one day and he was sitting there playing the piano. I was just like, ‘Oh, my God, do I love this man!’ He is just so sweet.”
But Budig’s B&B welcome wagon didn’t end there. As she eased into her new gig, it included her new on-screen daughter, Jacqueline MacInnes Wood (Steffy), who Budig describes as “so professional, gets the job done, has a great sense of humor. Jacqui is just a really good person; she’s cool, she’s funny, and she’s a mom, so she’s juggling a lot, but she’s still very thoughtful. She’ll be like, ‘Hey, I’m going to lunch. Do you want anything from [grocery story] Erewhon?’ She’s just very sweet that way.”
And while the jury is out as to whether Taylor and Brooke can truly settle into a healthy friendship this time around, Budig has definitely found herself enjoying the company of Brooke’s portrayer, Katherine Kelly Lang. “I had met Kelly once or twice before,” she says. “I met her at Susan Flannery’s [ex-Stephanie, who is one of Budig’s close friends] and maybe once at Ian’s [Buchanan, ex-James Warwick, also a longtime friend of Budig’s]. But she was so nice then and she’s so nice now, and again, she’s similar to Jacqui in that she’s just super-kind and down-to-earth and I’m always excited when I see that I have scenes with her. I just love her and I think she is stunning. She’s stunningly beautiful. You see her in person and you’re like, ‘Oh, my God!’ And she’s a really cool person with a nice, calm, sweet energy. I find that both she and Jacqui are just very real, very authentic.”
But, for the record, if Taylor and Brooke do revert back to their scratchy ways, Budig is all in for a catfight. “Oh, my God, that would be hilarious! I do love a good catfight!”
