Gay characters on the bold and the beautiful

Yes, I know the guacamole is extra. For a genre that's been around since the Truman Administration, soaps don't always get the credit they deserve for helping to pioneer gay story lines. People make fun of us. Some also assume that daytime audiences aren't nearly as woke as their primetime counterparts, so soaps would never dare to depict same-sex couples.

Think again! Here, we look back at some of daytime's groundbreaking LGBTQ characters — and the battles that were sometimes waged in order to tell authentic and relevant stories. Her job was to offer mental health support to divorcee Devon McFadden Tricia Pursleybut Devon didn't want to talk about her failed marriage.

She was more interested in pursuing a romantic relationship with Dr. It was an unprecedented plot point for characters in and outside of Pine Valley: Up until the moment Devon first laid eyes on Lynn, no daytime drama had ever featured a gay story line. They were so extraordinary and would make me cry.

People finally felt like there was a representation that fit. The relationship was never consummated because Lynn didn't share Devon's affection — not that ABC would have gone for that, anyway. It was the early days of this being presented in any way. When ABC approved of a plan by One Life to Live to introduce the first openly gay teenage boy init definitely came with restrictions.

Phillippe only spent a year on the show. Before presenting the first same-sex marriage in daytime history, the writers wanted to make sure Eden Riegel, who played Erica Kane's daughter Bianca, wasn't going anywhere. The writers worked with GLAAD, who encouraged the staff to "expunge" the scripts of the phrase "gay lifestyle" and to refrain from using the word homosexual, recalls Passanante.

Fans embraced the nuptials.

B&B Pride: A Look Back At Bold And The Beautiful’s LGBTQ Characters

People loved Erica [Susan Lucci]," continues Passanante. Ultimately, it was Bianca's message that 'this is about me and not about you. This is who I am. Either love me or don't, I can't change. We didn't feel like there was anything we could or couldn't do, we treated them like any other couple on the canvas and continued to grow their romance as such.

The couple is still together on the soap, but the actors only recur. My character was a full-on bitch diva, so I got blowback from fans who were like, 'As a gay man, you should be ashamed to play such an arch depiction of a bad guy. What Grimes and viewers appreciated the most was how organically the relationship developed.

There was no coming out story; instead, it followed two women who happened to fall in love. It existed without labels. I really appreciated that at a time where labels could be so restrictive for some people. It just felt like a really genuine, authentic story about two individuals falling for each other, no matter the circumstances.

Adds Fairbanks, "Our head writer at the time had a daughter who is bisexual. A new milestone was reached in when Maya Avant, Karla Mosley's full-time character on The Bold and the Beautifulrevealed that she was a transgender woman — a first for daytime TV. Jeffrey Carlson played transgender character Zoe Luper from on All My Children, but it was only a recurring role.