Tanner Novlan is coming to his The Bold and the Beautiful character’s defense when it comes to how he handled Steffy’s alleged surrogacy.
“This has been really tricky for me,” Novlan, who plays Finn on the long-running soap opera, exclusively told Us. “He’s a very smart doctor and as an actor approaching that story line, it makes sense for him to just go pull the files and see what’s going on and sort of thread that needle.”
Novlan, 40, argued that it would be too easy if Finn figured out his wife was lying to him about how she went through the insemination process. (Spoiler alert: She had an affair.)
“I think there’s a balance there that we have to play with in the sense of maybe just little inklings of something else is going on,” he continued. “I think this pairing between Steffy and Carter is so out of left field and he wouldn’t even think of that, because it’s like, what a weird pairing. So maybe that hasn’t come across his mind yet.”
He continued: “We’re gonna have to start seeing that slowly unfold, where Finn is starting to become more active in saying something else is wrong. She keeps telling him something else is wrong. He keeps just talking over her so he’s taking a lot of blame.”
Season 40, which airs weekdays on CBS, has followed the aftermath of Steffy’s (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) one night stand with Carter (Lawrence Saint-Victor), which led to her getting pregnant. Carter then created a plan that involved Steffy pretending she wanted to be a surrogate for him and his wife, Daphne (Murielle Hilaire). With Finn out of town, Steffy claimed she used her own frozen eggs to help implant an embryo, which would explain her carrying Carter’s baby.
“Often in real life, we just don’t want to see things,” Hilaire, 37, told Us. “Sometimes we put the blinders on. We try to keep peace and harmony and I know that breaks my character. I don’t want Daphne to be completely oblivious and dumb. I think that in real life, sometimes we just choose not to see.”
Saint-Victor, 44, also had his own read on Carter’s perspective.
“Daphne left him for three hours, but she left when he was attentive to her. He was a good husband to her, in his opinion, when she left. So now that he made this mistake, why would she stay?” he told Us about Carter’s thought process. “She left when he was good. Why would she stay when he messes up?”
He continued: “And that’s the whole thing about Carter, right? You’re this man I never met before. You’re virtuous. You’re loyal. What happens when he makes a mistake? So he doesn’t have any faith.”
As Carter continues to dig a deeper hole for himself, Saint-Victor added, “We’re on this roller-coaster of watching what this lie destroys in Steffy and Carter. Because to keep this lie going, you have to start becoming something you don’t want to be. Carter, he doesn’t want to be this bully. Steffy doesn’t want to be this liar who can’t get a word out when Carter’s talking. That’s not who they are, but they’re becoming this to keep this lie alive. So I think we’ll see more dismantling.”
The Bold and the Beautiful airs on CBS weekdays at 1:30 p.m. ET and streams on Paramount+.
