Dollar Bill Spencer may be known as one of the most provocative men in daytime, but Don Diamont is not afraid to show his emotions. After an event celebrating his 40 years at CBS — Diamont joined The Young and the Restless in 1985 and has starred on The Bold and the Beautiful since 2009 — the 62-year-old actor looked back (and forward!) with Us Weekly.
“I’m at a loss for words. I don’t know what my expectations were, but I can just tell you that it just far exceeded them,” Diamont began of recent celebrations with his soap opera family, noting that a speech from Bold and the Beautiful’s producer and head writer Bradley Bell brought him to tears quickly. “He was recounting how his dad [Y&R and B&B creator William Bell] was mowing the lawn and created a character named after him, Brad Carlton, [who I would play on Y&R]. And then he said that his dad looked at me as a son and it just broke me.”
Speeches from costars of past and present including Heather Tom, Beth Maitland, Peter Bergman and Scott Clifton brought “more tears,” with Diamont joking “even Thorsten [Kaye], that dumbass” gave a sentimental nod at the event, which was attended by his wife and kids. “I was so deeply moved and so touched,” he said. “It was just such a heartfelt experience, and just blew my mind.”
For B&B fans, it will likely come as no surprise that Tom, who has played Bill’s on-again, off-again love interest for 16 years, has a special place in Diamont’s heart. The actor called it a “gross understatement” to say he enjoys working with the actress.
“I came up with Billy calling her ‘my Katie.’ It is Bill’s nature. I think — maybe not politically correct, but it’s just the character I play — not only does he love her, not only does he somehow know that she’s best for him and she is his conscience and she’s his angel, but he has certain ownership of her. That’s Bill, that’s who he is,” Diamont told Us. “He feels like he made her and changed her and a life in a way that no one else did and no one else can. And she [the same for] him and the dynamic is beautiful. As I say, she’s not Heather Tom. She’s the one and only Heather Tom.”
Diamont called it “the greatest joy of my career to work opposite her.” Diamont then got choked up. “I get emotional talking about it,” he said. “She brought it up in her speech, actually, when she heard I was coming to B&B, she was at some event and she immediately grabbed her phone and was ignoring whatever was going on around her, and she is emailing Brad, ‘I want Don Diamont.’ That is the most flattering thing ever in my career, that the one and only Heather Tom wanted to work opposite me — and then I take all the credit for ending her Emmy drought and her winning three in a row after she started working with me.”
Does that mean Bill and Katie — a story line that Diamont compares to Beauty and the Beast — could be giving things another shot sometime soon? Diamont hopes so.
“100 percent, of course,” he said. “There’s always Ridge [Kaye] for Brooke [Katherine Kelly Lang] like there’s always Katie for Bill. There’s always that in the wings no matter what happens.”
One of the other formative relationships for Bill is with son Liam (Clifton). The father-son have been at odds over the years but are currently at a crossroads after Bill’s support for Luna (Lisa Yamada). What Bill doesn’t realize, however, is Liam has recently been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.
“Those very confrontational scenes about Luna — Bill, of course, got defensive, saying some really, really hurtful things to Liam and things that Bill didn’t really mean, but Bill felt cornered. When an alley cat is cornered, he’s just going to lash out,” Diamont said. “And it was just too hard for Bill to hear, and he knew everything Liam was saying was right, and he just couldn’t hear. I thought those scenes that we had a couple of weeks ago, at lunch, were just beautiful [where] Bill expresses his sorrow at what he had said to Liam, and Liam acknowledges to Bill what he has meant to him in his life. With everything that they’ve been through, for Liam to say to Bill, ‘You made me the man that I am,’ that means so much to him, because he just feels like he’s done so much wrong. Even when he’s trying to do something it seems to come back and bite him in the ass.”
Diamont added, “As we move forward into this story, we know that Liam is ill, there will be just some beautiful moments with Bill and Liam.”
While it’s likely only a matter of time before Bill is clued in on Liam’s health issues, there’s some fans online convinced that it could actually be Bill with the tumor — thinking that could explain his softer demeanor in recent months.
“I have not heard that!” Diamont told Us when we filled him in, adding that he doesn’t pay attention to the comments. “I don’t think it’s healthy — some actors do it and then they’re just torn to shreds about the comment about how they look or their hair or makeup or weight, or how they play the scene or what they’re doing with their character. So no, I haven’t heard anything about that, but to the best of my knowledge, Bill is tumorless.”
Diamont actually thinks seeing himself in Luna is behind Bill’s support for the controversial character. “I play Bill as being a very damaged person. I have my own subtext for what has made Bill, Bill. They touched on it a bit with Luna. I always played Bill as a bastard son and as somebody who had a very dysfunctional relationship with his mother,” he said. “When Bill first showed up, he was the ultimate misogynistic billionaire playboy. And the first story was, ‘Donna, you sleep with me or I have goods on Eric, and I’m going to put him in prison. That’s your choice.’ That’s the kind of guy who showed up and that’s a damaged soul and certainly somebody who has mother issues. … In the Luna situation, while his heart was in the right place, he just saw damaged goods.”
In addition to adding Bill and Katie’s son Will (Crew Morrow) to the cast — “I think he’s doing a terrific job, I’m thrilled to have him here” — Diamont is hopeful for a return for Darin Brooks’ Wyatt and more scenes with all the Spencer men.
“The scenes with Bill, Wyatt and Liam — I would get such crazy positive feedback from people walking up to me on the street about how they love the scenes together with all the boys. Now we add Crew to that mix and the dynamic is so entertaining,” Diamont told Us. “I love Darin. He’s such a fine actor with a great sense of humor. So much of the banter between the three of them — those Spencer men scenes — a lot of that is stuff we come up with when we’re rehearsing. Darin and Scott, I love them both as actors and as people. I’ve just been so blessed to be surrounded by such exceptionally talented people and just good people. And I miss Darin and hope to find a way to get him back.”
The Bold and the Beautiful airs on CBS weekdays at 1:30 p.m. ET.
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