Kelly Sullivan made her debut as Darcy Dylan on The Bold and the Beautiful on Thursday, August 27, marking her return to daytime after more than a decade away.
Sullivan, who previously appeared on General Hospital as Kate Howard/Connie Falconeri and The Young and the Restless as Sage Warner, says she was immediately drawn to the character when the opportunity came her way months ago. “On the first page, I said, ‘Yeah, I definitely, definitely, want to audition for this,’” she recalls. “For me, it’s always the character. I just love her. She’s a spitfire. She’s just like, ‘Here I am,’ and I think there’s a really fun freedom to play characters like that. You can sort of live vicariously through them.”
That enthusiasm carried into her audition with Sydney Bullock, who plays Darcy’s daughter, Melissa “Missy” Dylan. “She and I just clicked as soon as I walked in,” Sullivan reports. “I just hugged her, and she was just so sweet and bubbly. I just was like, ‘What a gift to be able to work with this human.’ And then the next day they said, ‘We’d like you to do it, and you start in a month.’”
That month-long lead time gave Sullivan the chance to prepare for her return to the fast-paced world of daytime drama. “I had a really beautiful, slow introduction to her instead of being shot out of a cannon,” she notes. “I was nervous because I haven’t done a soap in over 10 years. That’s a long time because it’s just a specific way of working, and I was like, ‘What if I can’t do it? Who do I think I am?’ So, you have a bit of impostor syndrome, a bit of, ‘Oh, I don’t want to hold things up.’ But as soon as I got there, and as soon as I walked on set for our rehearsal in the morning, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s like riding a bike.’ So, it was really special for me, just my own little moment in my own little corner. I was like, ‘This is amazing! That’s awesome! Nobody knows it but me.’”
Among the familiar faces Sullivan encountered during her first days at B&B was Crew Morrow (Will Spencer), son of her former Y&R costar Joshua Morrow (Nick Newman).
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“The first day I worked with Sydney, and then Heather Tom [Katie Logan Spencer], and Crew,” she relays. “I was sitting in the hair chair, and I hear this voice, and I’m like, ‘That sounds like someone I know.’ And I turn over, and it’s Crew. And he looks at me, and I look at him, and the first thing out of my mouth was, ‘Oh, my God, you look just like your dad.’ And then I kind of wished I wouldn’t have said that because I’m sure he gets it all the time, but it’s uncanny, the resemblance and the sound. And then 20 minutes later, I went up to him, and I said, ‘I’m sorry for saying that. That’s just so predictable.’ And he goes, ‘It’s a compliment.’ I said, ‘I just want you to know, I love your dad. I worked with him for a year and a half very closely, and he’s very special to me.’
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Sullivan reconnected with some other colleagues at the studio, helping to ease those first-day jitters. “I know Sean Kanan [Deacon Sharpe] from General Hospital [where he played A.J. Quartermaine],” she shares. “And I was just really grateful to begin my first day with Heather, because she’s just so disarming. She’s so fun and funny and silly and was very kind to me. I think that first day I had around 50 pages, and I just wanted to show up at my best, and she was gracious and kind. The second day I worked, Sean was there, and that was great. He’s the same. It’s just like, ‘I haven’t seen you in 10, 11 years, and no time has passed.”
While those connections helped calm her nerves, Sullivan says the warm welcome extended throughout the studio. “It’s such a really amazing vibe in that building of Bold and the Beautiful,” she adds. “Everyone that worked that day, even those who weren’t in scenes with me, came up to me and introduced themselves. That just doesn’t often happen. But to come up and say hi, hug, whatever, I was like, ‘Wow, this is a great place to work. Everyone’s happy to be there.’ I feel like someone needed to pinch me because it was like, ‘This is too good.’”
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Another appealing aspect of joining the show is the opportunity to develop a character with no previous history on the canvas. “I was also very happy to be doing a new role, a new character, because there’s no preconceived anything,” she explains. “I did a replacement character on GH, and I didn’t mind that. But I just feel like there’s something really freeing about a new person on the canvas that no one’s ever seen or heard of. I feel really lucky.”
Sullivan’s first appearance came via a phone call between Darcy and Missy. Next week, however, Darcy arrives in Los Angeles, shedding more light on both the character and her relationship with her daughter. “Her father left when she was a child, and so Darcy raised her as a single mom,” Sullivan explains. “They moved around a lot. They don’t have a lot of money, never did, so they made the best of what they had. Darcy raised her to be a very independent, confident woman, and it wasn’t always easy. She was Darcy’s whole life, and she moved away when she was 18, so Darcy’s relationship with her over the past few years hasn’t been as close as she would have liked. There’s this best friends [dynamic], which isn’t always conducive to parenting, but what you do know is the love that Darcy has for her daughter and [she] would do anything for her.”
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Now that Darcy has officially arrived on the canvas, Sullivan is looking forward to seeing where the character’s journey takes her.
“I’m really excited,” she enthuses. “When I finished my chemistry read, I hugged Brad Bell [executive producer and head writer], and I said, ‘I love her. She’s amazing.’ His ability to write a woman like this? He’s incredible. He really fleshes out these characters, and I was so grateful to be able to step in her shoes. It’s just a dream to be able to have that opportunity.”
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