B&B’s Matthew Atkinson Talks Douglas and Breaking Up ‘Bridge’

Even Hope Logan Spencer agrees that Thomas Forrester has changed on The Bold and the Beautiful. Should the Forrester heir get full-time or at least 50% custody of his son Douglas? Matthew Atkinson, Thomas’s portrayer, talked to Soap Hub about why Thomas deserves a chance to be a dad.

Matthew Atkinson Says Thomas Is a Changed Man

Thomas is touting that he’s no longer the same man he was a few years ago. The character, who was suffering a break from reality, talked to a mannequin like it was a real person, and used his own son to snare Hope (Annika Noelle) into marriage is no more. What led to Thomas’s evolution?

Father’s Daze

“He was already on the path to [getting better] when he had the surgery,” Atkinson notes of the operation that Thomas underwent in late 2020. “There were things that weren’t his fault, and there were things that were. He’d lost his wife Caroline [Spencer Forrester Douglas’s birth mother played by Linsey Godfrey, now Sarah Horton on Days of our Lives], and he had this kid to take care of. He was torn between not wanting to be his father and not knowing how to create the environment Douglas needed.”

Matthew Atkinson Recalls Thomas’s Dark Days

Atkinson recalls that, as far as Thomas was concerned, Hope was the answer to his prayers. “He saw Hope, a woman without a child, because she thought her baby had died and Douglas [then, Henry Joseph Samiri; now, Django Ferri] was a child without a mother. Thomas fell in love with Hope, but it went too far. Thomas got carried away. He had a mental break and hit rock bottom. Then, there was a period of time where he found his way back. For a while, though, he manipulated people.”

All that is in the past as far as Thomas and Atkinson are concerned; what matters is both the present and the future. “Now, he’s trying to be the kind of person that Douglas wants to have as a father,” Matthew Atkinson says. “He’s not trying to be the best father in the world. He’s trying not to be the worst and to do the best that he can. In the living of life and the ups and downs over the last few years, Thomas has learned what’s good for his state of being.”

A Bridge Too Far

Thomas’s quest to win custody of Douglas stands to cause conflict between Ridge Forrester (Thorsten Kaye), Douglas’s paternal grandfather, and Brooke Logan Forrester (Katherine Kelly Lang), the boy’s maternal grandmother. Does that play a role in Thomas’s actions, given that he’s no fan of Brooke’s?

“What’s important for Thomas is being a father again and having Douglas in his life,” Atkinson asserts. “When Thomas doesn’t have much else to focus on besides work, he needs hobbies. I don’t think that Thomas is passionate about his parents getting back together. When Ridge is with Taylor [Hayes, Krista Allen], there’s not a problem to be solved every other week like when he’s with Brooke. At the same time, conflict-free couples don’t do well on soap operas.”

The Bold and the Beautiful (BB) airs weekdays on CBS. Check your local listings for airtimes. For more about what’s coming up in Los Angeles, check out all the latest that’s been posted on B&B spoilers, and for an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.

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