For just the second time in the past two years, Winsor Harmon is back on The Bold and the Beautiful -- and this time his appearance will not be part of a dream sequence. Unfortunately, his return might be something more of a nightmare, but more on that in a bit.
Harmon has played the role of Thorne Forrester off and on since 1996, but it's been nearly a decade since he's seen anything in the way of serious airtime on B&B. That's why the actor admits that it was a surprise when he got a call to return to the CBS soap.
"I was actually sitting on the couch and my phone dinged," the actor told Soap Opera Digest. "It was B&B asking, 'Hey, Winsor, what is your availability for working?' It just came out of left field and was the last thing that I was expecting, so it was quite a surprise. I said, 'My availability for B&B has always been available.' "
Harmon agreed to return to B&B without even knowing what his upcoming story would be about. Fans, of course, now know that Thorne was invited home as part of dad Eric's planned "Forrester bash." The bash, touted by Eric as a celebration of the Forrester legacy and future, is actually a party the Forrester patriarch is throwing to celebrate his own life.
Eric has been told that he has just months to live. While Eric believes that only a few people know the truth about his health, most of his family has been told. Thorne has not yet found out.
The B&B gig came at a good time for Harmon. The actor revealed that a sitcom pilot he'd landed was scrapped due to the COVID shutdown and an indie film he was going to shoot ended up falling victim to the recent WGA and SAG/AFTRA strikes.
When Harmon last appeared on B&B in 2022, it was for a one-day dream sequence to mark the show's 35th anniversary. This time around, Harmon needed to report for multiple days of work with a lot more dialogue and that presented some new challenges for the actor: most notably nearly four hours of travel time each day to get from his home in Santa Barbara to the B&B studio in Los Angeles.
Still, confronting the infamous L.A. traffic was worth it and Harmon has indicated that he'd keep doing it if the show decided to write more story for Thorne moving forward.
"We'll see how the audience reacts and I think things will start popping in Brad's [Bell, B&B's executive producer and head writer] head and he'll start writing for Thorne again," Harmon said.
Based on social media reaction, fans seem to be hoping to see more of Thorne, too. But it isn't Harmon that the show has not been writing for. From November 2017 to February 2019, former General Hospital star Ingo Rademacher portrayed Thorne and the show struggled to craft story for Thorne then, too.
Actors Clayton Norcross and Jeff Trachta has also played Thorne. For a complete history of Thorne Forrester, check out Soap Central's B&B character profile section, Who's Who in Los Angeles.
In addition to his work on The Bold and the Beautiful, Harmon also appeared as Del Henry on All My Children from 1994 to 1995.
Are you happy to see Winsor Harmon back as B&B's Thorne? Would you like to see the character featured more prominently on the show? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.
