As the daughter of Y&R’s legendary co-creators, William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell, getting into the family business might have seemed like a natural path for Lauralee Bell. “It wasn’t me asking, ‘Could you please put me on the show?’ so it must’ve been my dad’s idea,” the actress recalls of how she came to be in Genoa City as a performer. “I was 9 when I was an extra in a scene with David Hasselhoff [ex-Snapper] on an airplane, so I had no lines. After it was over, I said how easy that was and my dad didn’t like that I completely got the wrong impression, so he was like, ‘We’ll try this again — maybe.’ ”
So in 1983, Bell was cast as Cricket Blair, Jabot’s new teen model, but there were no promises as to how long the role would last. “It was for just two days,” Bell explains. “It was a little scary this time because I had to do a photo session and that required a lot of confidence, but I was terrified. Plus, I had this thick Midwestern accent, which made it hard to understand me. So I did the best I could and when it was over, I asked, ‘If I take acting lessons, and work really hard, do you think I could do two more days?’ And my dad said, ‘Well, we’ll see.’ Then it became two more days and another two days.”
An enthusiastic response from viewers helped her cause. “The fan mail said that they liked seeing a real young person playing a young person,” Bell reports. “It wasn’t a 30-year-old trying to play 18 and that was an interesting thought to my dad, so he said, ‘Let’s think about it next summer.’ ”
That’s because Bell’s parents insisted she continue to attend school during the year, with Y&R as her summer job. “Next year came and I got a little bit of a bigger storyline,” she says. “Then he really got into the message storylines with the Danny Romalotti concerts and Cricket was always so good. In fact, too good. At this point, I was watching Lily and Dusty on AS THE WORLD TURNS and loving that they were in bed together and having this crazy, fun romance, when I knew what was coming up for us was the summer of, ‘It’s okay to say no.’ I’d have to get up and make a speech at a fun concert that it’s okay to refrain [from sex]. And I was like, ‘This is so not easy.’ But disagreeing would always come back to bite me because at the end of the summer, we’d have the highest ratings, so my dad was always right.”
In 1986, the Bell family pulled up stakes in Chicago and relocated permanently to Los Angeles, Beverly Hills to be precise, because Bill and Lee were creating another soap that would debut the following year, THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL. Their daughter was now a senior in high school, with only two credits needed to graduate, so didn’t need to devote a lot of time to academics. “It’s weird, I don’t ever remember him saying, ‘We’re going to make you a regular on the show,’ or, ‘We’re going to use you a lot more now,’ ” Bell points out. “It just sort of happened and I was working a lot more.”
Sixteen-year-old Phillip Chancellor III was brought back to Genoa City as Cricket’s new love interest, along with a new romantic rival, teen terror Nina Webster. “I loved the dynamic of two polar-opposite girls interested in the same guy,” notes Bell. “But Nina got Phillip in bed and she became pregnant, so Cricket knew the best thing was for her to marry Phillip. But he wanted nothing to do with Nina so Cricket and Danny taught her how to properly use a knife and fork and how to walk with a book on her head. They turned her into a lady and it worked, Phillip married her.”
Cricket transitioned to a new romance with Danny, the young rock star she had been crushing on for years. “The audience seemed to really like that Cricket went from Danny’s teen groupie to them becoming more like equals,” Bell reasons. “It was like looking at that Shaun Cassidy poster on your bedroom wall and hoping, ‘Maybe one day he’ll fall in love with me.’ That’s what happened with Cricket and Danny. But we had no idea how popular they had become with the fans because there was no social media, so we were living in this vacuum. We’d go to the Hard Rock Cafe after work and get recognized by people, especially those who were visiting from out of town, and they were screaming at us, they were so excited. And that’s how we found out that viewers liked our characters together.”
More mature material came when Cricket became a lawyer and started dealing with sexual harassment by Michael Baldwin. He eventually went to jail, and while Danny was appearing on Broadway in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, he was seduced by a rabid fan, Phyllis Summers, who caused the demise of the Romalotti marriage. “I used to love watching the Katherine and Jill catfights and wishing I had something like that to play,” Bell admits. “I finally got that with how much Cricket and Phyllis hated each other. It was so much fun to have those kind of scenes with Michelle [Stafford, Phyllis]. My dad rarely mentioned anything about scenes to me, but I remember him shaking his fist and saying, ‘Next time you’re with Phyllis, you have to really give it to her!’ Then he started giving us lines where we were constantly trying to one-up each other and it sort of built to a higher level. I finally got to know what it was like to be snarky and I loved it! To this day, I love that these two women can hardly stand to be in the same room with each other, and Michelle is so good at keeping that alive. We’d be laughing just prior to a scene and when the camera started rolling, there was instant tension.”
While Danny was stranded in a loveless marriage with Phyllis, Cricket abandoned her nickname for the more traditional Christine, and was now a free agent in the romance department. She started becoming more chummy with Paul Williams but Bell’s father knew the process couldn’t be rushed. “The challenge was getting the Danny and Cricket fans to become Paul and Chris fans and we knew it wouldn’t be easy,” Bell shares. “I know Doug [Davidson, Paul] was worried about it, so that was a testament to my dad taking this super-slowly and not forcing anything. It started as a friendship with Paul and Chris, and by the time we kind of changed course, fans were completely on board!”
But while Christine was excelling at her law career, her portrayer was struggling. “Personally, the dialogue and legalese are crazy-hard,” sighs Bell. “I would listen to other people running lines in hair and makeup and they’re like, ‘What are you going to have?’ ‘I think I’ll have an iced tea. How was your day?’ and I would be like, ‘Ugh, I used to have that.’ My lines were so much more technical and I would get jealous of the easier dialogue the other actors got to do. However, when Christian [J. LeBlanc, Michael] and I would have a case or opening statements or whatever and I got through them, there was a part of me that was secretly happy that I actually sounded like a real lawyer so I loved the challenge.”
Although Christine would suffer a heartbreaking miscarriage in 2015, Bell was okay with her character never becoming a mother. “I had two young ones at home, so to be able to go to work for a few hours and not have to share scenes with a baby or kids and have adult conversations was such a break for me,” she reflects. “I thought it was great to see that there are some women who don’t have time or the inclination to be a mom and that there’s nothing wrong with that.”
And now that it’s been established that Paul and Christine are headed for a divorce, Bell is looking forward to new plot possibilities for her alter. “Selfishly, I would love a little bit more fun,” she acknowledges. “I’m all good with playing the serious DA, I just really appreciate anytime there’s a balance to show that you can work hard but play hard, too. A couple of days ago, it came out that I was going over to B&B so I called Brad and asked, ‘Did you say this?’ He said, ‘I think I did.’ And I was like, ‘What were you thinking, because it can’t be right now.’ He said, ‘I know, I know.’ So I don’t see myself going over there anytime soon to find me a Forrester.”
The fact that Y&R enthusiasts are still invested in Cricket/Christine after all of these years is very touching to Bell. “You just can’t say thanks enough,” she smiles. “I’ve loved pretty much every day of my job. I still walk into that CBS building excited because I get to do what I love and work with the people I love. I couldn’t ask for a better ride with better fans.”
Looking Ahead
Y&R isn’t the only project keeping Lauralee Bell busy. The actress, who has starred in four Lifetime movies (RUBY, PEARL IN THE MIST, NIGHTMARE TENANT and MISTRESS HUNTER) and also created three streaming series (FAMILY DINNER, JUST OFF RODEO and ML PROMISE), has other ventures lined up. “Martha Byrne [ex-Lily ATWT] and I have had development deals sent to us and then we had two separate issues happen,” she explains. “With one of the production companies, there was a war that broke out in their area the night after we got the document, so that didn’t go through. Then we were all set for another deal and Covid happened and shut everything down. We’re always in meetings but nothing’s exactly at the level where it was right before Covid. Then we were very close again with picking out some dates for something and the writers’ strike happened. So we’re in this weird holding pattern. I’m hoping for some good things happening in the fall. I love doing Lifetime movies. It’s such a great couple of weeks of fun. I appreciate the dialogue. It’s not lawyer talk and very easy for me to learn [chuckles].”
Just The Facts
Birthday: December 22
Born And Raised: Chicago, IL
Family Tree: Her parents are the late William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell, co-creators of Y&R and B&B.
Sibling Revelry: Bell has two older brothers, William, Jr., president of Bell-Phillip Television Productions Inc., and Bradley, who is B&B’s executive producer and head writer.
Relationship Status: Married to Scott Martin since October 4, 1997.
Party Of Four: Son Christian is 22 and daughter Samantha is 20.
What’s In A Name? “My dad thought it would be cute if my character had a nickname. We knew a girl named Cricket in Lake Geneva, where we spent our summers, and I went to school with a Lolly, so he was debating between those two names. I guess he thought Cricket would be better.”
