Photo Credit: JPI Studios

The Bold and the Beautiful’s executive producer and head writer, Brad Bell and his newest addition to the cast in a contract role, Kristolyn Lloyd, (Dayzee) spoke with Nelson Branco in his new Soapgeist column out today from TV Guide Canada. If you missed last week’s episodes of B&B, featuring Stephanie Forrester (Susan Flannery) visiting the homeless, and prior episodes in which Stephanie comes to terms with fighting for her life after having an eye-opening experiencing witnessing those on the streets  in L.A…  Bell and Lloyd both spoke on what it meant to them and the CBS sudser.   Here are some excerpts:

Bell on that his intentions with the homeless story has more legs than than just about having a contender of episodes for this year’s Daytime Emmys: “Every day I drive into work, and I see all these homeless people who may have mental health issues like ADHD, etc. We’re going to tackle that on B&B in 2011. Just because they may not be living the healthy mental norm doesn’t mean they should be living out on the streets. You always want to do the best you can with the ingredients you have, but you never know when one is missing or why there isn’t a proper balance. You can go months trying to figure out why, but right now everything has fallen into place. It feels like the show is where I want it to be. We’re bringing in a lot of reality to the show along with romance and some fantasy. And we haven’t seen the last of these homeless people on our show. Many are coming in for our Christmas shows. They’ve now become our friends. We’re going to have a feast — and shoot a great show.”

Photo Credit: JPI Studios

Lloyd on what it felt like to be part of such a huge socially relevant story on the soaps: “Brad is so hands-on with this storyline. During my audition, I didn’t even know Brad was the executive producer because they rarely show up at auditions but that’s how involved he is. Another reason why this is great is because after I did missionary work in Indonesia last year, it led me to doing some work on Skid Row every Saturday. When I came in to audition for this part, it was a very different character, but after I told Brad Bell about my missionary work, they [re-imagined] Dayzee. Dayzee was very hard and hopeless originally — she was even about to turn a trick before Stephanie first met her. Also, at that time, they were considering filming on Skid Row so after our talk Pandora’s Box opened and all this great stuff came up for the character. It’s sort of based on me. All those people at Gladys Park are my friends. We’re mixing those two worlds together. I offered my insight more than research. For example, I made sure that Stephanie followed through on her commitment to helping these people because the homeless [don’t need any more hollow promises].”