On the Fifth Anniversary of Matthew Atkinson’s Bold & Beautiful Debut, Thomas Stands Poised to Get Everything He Wants
Credit: Howard Wise/JPI (4)
On March 15, 2019, Ridge and Taylor’s son got the ultimate makeover.
Five years ago today, The Bold and the Beautiful revealed its fourth Thomas Forrester: soap vet Matthew Atkinson, who had already made waves as Summer Newman’s ill-fated first husband Austin Travers on The Young and the Restless. But it wouldn’t be until a little bit later in the actor’s run that we’d come to realize that the change wasn’t merely a cosmetic one. The Thomas who returned to L.A. was very different from the one who had left…
During Adam Gregory and Pierson Fodé’s stints as Taylor and Ridge’s son, the character was played mostly as an ab-tastic nice guy. Once Atkinson was tapped to take over, however, the show began revisiting the instability that had been a hallmark of Drew Tyler Bell’s run. (Remember Thomas blowing up stepnemesis Rick’s car?)
Atkinson rose to the challenge and then some. He even managed to make sense of Thomas’ misdeeds, which have run the gamut from gaslighting his own son to framing stepmother Brooke for calling CPS on him. “I don’t think this guy is a bad guy,” he told Michael Fairman. “He is doing a lot of bad things, but a lot of people can relate to him and the struggles that he is dealing with: being a single father and having a rough childhood with his family being broken up.
“[Thomas] wants his father to approve of him and respect him, and he has never really felt that way,” he added. “A lot of people out there know what it’s like to have a parent who they just want approval from but can’t get it… Everybody knows what it is like to think that they are making the right decision and end up making the wrong decision and possibly hurting someone in the process… and the kind of shame that you feel from doing something like that. This makes Thomas an interesting character where viewers could say, ‘Well, I don’t agree with anything that he is doing, but I can relate to him, and I want him to be better.’ Yet Thomas just keeps making all of the wrong decisions.”
A New Beginning
Despite his litany of sins, Thomas has been given (yet) another chance to start over by Hope. “Given” might be too strong a word, actually; she kinda had to take him back at Hope For the Future or lose her line. Still, he has made the most of it, showing her day in and day out that he is a changed man — and one who is totally devoted to her. If he’d known years ago that all it would really take to turn her head was being handsome and decent, he could’ve skipped the whole part where he let her believe that baby Beth was dead and proposed to Zoe Buckingham in hopes of making her jealous!
For the moment, Thomas has everything that he wants: Hope at his side. Hope in his arms. Hope in his bed. On second thought, make that almost everything that he wants. A chip off the ol’ block, Ridge’s elder son is dying to remarry Hope. And it sure seems like in time, his wish will be granted — unless, that is, his support of sister Steffy after her fatal stabbing of monster-in-law Sheila Carter drives a wedge between him and Hope, who is more concerned about her stepsister’s husband, Finn Finnegan. Will Thomas be able to show Finn enough compassion over the demise of his (say it with us) “birth mother” to satisfy Hope? Or will the grace that she shows Finn awaken the beast in Thomas?
