The Bold and the Beautiful Performer of the Week: Annika Noelle and Scott Clifton as Hope Logan and Liam Spencer

For the last few months, The Bold and the Beautiful's Scott Clifton and Annika Noelle have broken our hearts as they dealt with Liam's alleged cancer and his supposed impending death. They turned in noteworthy performance after performance, but when they learned the truth about what really happened to Liam, these two seasoned players knocked it right out of the park, earning them both Soap Central's Performers of the Week.

Hope and Liam's joy and laughter...and horror

Hope and Liam spent most of the week marveling over how different Grace Buckingham (Cassandra Creech) was from her smarmy jailbird husband, Reese (Wayne Brady), who stole their newborn at birth and made them believe she was dead for nearly a year. To Hope and Liam, Grace was the complete opposite — the miracle worker who gave Liam back his life.

During those scenes, Noelle and Clifton demonstrated their easy chemistry after working with one another for so many years. They knew their characters, their relationship, and gave us two people who still genuinely love one another, but know they can't be together.

Then, everything changed on a dime for Hope and Liam, with Noelle and Clifton giving it all they got as everything they thought they knew was revealed to be a lie.

The Bold and the Beautiful's Hope and Liam go ballistic

The idea that someone would lie to him and tell him he had terminal cancer was so foreign to Liam that all Clifton could express at first was sheer disbelief. We could see Liam taking it all in with his tone of voice and the shocked and confused look on his face. When it finally sank in what Grace had done, Clifton expressed all of Liam's pent-up rage about dying as he lunged at the not-so-good doctor for taking all those good months from him and breaking his family's heart.

Then, Hope realized why Grace had done it. Noelle dug into the most horrific moment from Hope's life to bring the character full circle. She never got to express her horror at Reese properly back in 2019 because she was so overwhelmed after getting Beth back, but she let it all out on Grace. Noelle had us fooled as Hope quietly approached Grace with a smile and then smacked her clear across the face.

By the time Finn escorted Grace to the police station to turn herself in, Hope and Liam fell into a stunned and relieved embrace. But the look on Liam's face was dark and angry, telling us that another side of Liam may soon be unleashed.

Trending

Through all this, Cassandra Creech, always a recurring player since her The Bold and the Beautiful debut in 2022, showed us what she can do when given the chance. She turned in a mesmerizing performance as a guilty and anguished Grace and we'd like to see what more the Emmy-nominated actress has to offer.

Catch all-new episodes of The Bold and the Beautiful weekdays on CBS and Paramount Plus.

×

Was this article helpful?

Thank You for feedback