Bold and Beautiful Star Heather Tom Reveals the Soap Romances She’ll Never Get Over
Bold and the Beautiful star Heather Tom revisits the love stories that defined her soap career, sharing two favorites and spotlighting her romance with Scott Reeves’ Ryan on The Young and the Restless as a wildly romantic standout.
Heather Tom just hit 35 years in daytime, and when People asked her to pick her favorite on-screen romances, she went straight to the beginning and the one she is still playing. It is a very soap answer, but honestly, a solid one.
The first and the latest
- The Young and the Restless - Victoria and Ryan: Back when Tom was playing Victoria Newman, her character fell for Scott Reeves' Ryan McNeil. She remembers it as wildly romantic. Victoria was 16, he was older, and the whole thing had that Romeo-and-Juliet energy soaps live for. Fans still bring it up to her, and she says it worked because the story was thoughtfully built, she was having a blast doing it, and that spark bled onto the screen in a way people connected with.
- The Bold and the Beautiful - Katie and Bill: On the other end, there is the ongoing pull between Katie and Don Diamont's Bill Spencer Jr. Tom has known Diamont since she was 15, which gives their scenes a lived-in honesty. In her words, he is like family, and the show lets that shared history breathe. Fun twist: years ago on The Young and the Restless, she and Diamont even kicked around the idea of their characters getting together, but the writers never pulled the trigger. Cut to 2009, Diamont joins Bold and suddenly they can actually play it. Tom admits she nudged the writers - basically, try us together - and they did. Bill and Katie have been circling each other ever since, off and on, for years.
The little behind-the-scenes push
The part that made me smile: Tom actively campaigned for the pairing once Diamont landed on Bold. She told the writers they work well together, and the show eventually leaned in. Not something you hear about every day, but it lines up with how natural their scenes feel.
Sometimes you can manufacture chemistry and play it, but a lot of the time it is just there - an unspoken thing that makes it work in a really organic way.
So, the pick is the first and the latest: a teenage whirlwind that fans still talk about, and a long-running push-pull with an old colleague she has basically grown up with. For Tom, that bookend says it all.