The uncertainty surrounding Luna Nozawa’s (Lisa Yamada) true paternity on The Bold and the Beautiful becomes a focal point once again this week, as Li Finnegan (Naomi Matsuda) summons her estranged husband, Jack Finnegan, to determine once and for all if he has a part to play in the tale.
For Ted King, who plays Jack, the call to return came at a good time. “I just finished shooting two projects in New York,” he explains. “One was a film directed by a friend of mine that I met on Oppenheimer and the other one was a new baseball television series. I was working there for about two months and Bold and the Beautiful reached out and asked if I would do several shows for them in December. It was just perfect timing and a wonderful experience.”
The actor, who first appeared as John “Finn” Finnegan’s (Tanner Novlan) father in 2021 and won a Daytime Emmy for his efforts, appreciates that the show continues to find ways to incorporate his alter ego. “I like the character a lot because we don’t know a lot about him, so they could take Jack in any direction they choose to,” King notes. “It’s exciting for me as an actor, and in this particular situation, it’s a complicated story involving his ex-wife and her sister and accusations about paternity.”
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Indeed, once Jack arrives at Li’s office, he finds her sister, Poppy Nozawa (Romy Park), present. Li then accuses Jack of fathering Luna. Since the drama in question happened well before any of the characters ever appeared on the canvas, King says there were some dynamics to work through. “We had to figure out the backstory,” he explains. “How close were Jack and Poppy when she was living with Jack and Li back in the day? So that was interesting to go back and try to trace that history to the present and figure out how these characters now sit with one another.”
An opportunity he welcomes. “My favorite thing to do as an actor is the research,” King relays. “I love figuring out where the characters have been before we see them today. It’s a very creative process. It can really determine how to play the scenes, so I love the unpredictable.”
When Jack arrives at Li’s office, he is hopeful that they can put their marriage back on track. “He thinks that they’re going to patch things up,” King previews. “When Li calls him, he’s excited. He’s really looking forward to Li saying, ‘I forgive you. Let’s get back together.’ ”
Jack quickly discovers that’s not the case, however, when he’s accused of being Luna’s real father. “He’s completely blindsided,” says King. Even though Jack was unfaithful in the past and welcomed Finn with Sheila Carter (Kimberlin Brown) during his marriage, Jack takes umbrage at the accusation that he slept with his sister-in-law, too. “Even if you’re guilty once, it doesn’t mean you’re guilty twice,” King points out. “And it’s amazing how indignant you can become.”
The scenes, King teases, are “very intense. They were such a rush to shoot and figure out how to portray so that all the characters’ integrity was preserved. They were most complicated for Naomi to perform because she has so much physical behavior within the scenes. Naomi had the heavy lifting, and I was there to support in any way I could.”
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Since Li is a doctor, she decides to get to the truth using the tools in her arsenal. “She literally stabs Jack to draw his blood,” King muses. “The three of us are talking while it’s all going on.” The unusual choreography of the sequence required some additional thought, King reports. “I was talking to wardrobe about what kinds of jackets Jack could wear where this could happen quickly,” he shares. “Jack can’t be wearing a suit jacket because it won’t pull up on his arm fast enough, because she rips his sleeve up and shoves a needle into his vein. How do you do that quickly? It’s not simple, so we had to figure all that out in rehearsal beforehand in one of our dressing rooms.”
The results of the paternity test will be revealed on Friday, January 24, and King has high praise for the drama he’s playing out on screen. “It’s a great storyline because of the duplicitous behavior that’s taken place and all of the interesting possibilities that could come from it,” King declares. “I told that to Brad [Bell, executive producer/head writer] at the holiday party. I found myself thinking, ‘Oh wow, so this is what’s going to happen?! That’s a whole new layer that I hadn’t thought of before I got those scripts.’ I really enjoyed it.”
The Bold and The Beautiful, Weekdays, CBS