‘Like hopping on a moving train’

Jack Wagner has returned to The Bold and the Beautiful after more than a decade, but don’t expect the same old Nick Marone.

“He’s not a guy on a Shady Marlin anymore,” the prolific TV star tells Entertainment Weekly ahead of his character’s big re-entrance on the June 16’s episode, referring to the vibey vessel his B&B character used to sail around in during his 2003-2012 stint on the soap. “This guy now has upgraded his wardrobe. He’s sophisticated. He runs Marone Industries. He’s a shipping tycoon. He’s wealthy, he’s respected, and he’s styled in terms of how he looks.”

By the time Wagner, 65, made his debut on the Young and the Restless sister series, he was already an established TV star. 40 years after he made his General Hospital debut, he says that fans still call him Frisco Jones, and he appeared as the memorable Dr. Peter Burns on five seasons of Melrose Place before Nick Marone set course for Wagner’s harbor. But Marone holds an indelible place in his career – especially for his turbulent relationship with Brooke Logan, played by long-running B&B star Katherine Kelly Lang.

The decisive player in motivating Wagner’s return was Lang. “The reason I thought it would work, and the reason I really wanted to do it, is because [series creator Bradley Bell] and I agreed that this has to be focused on Brooke. I don’t want to dilute the character anywhere. His primary motivation is he has found out that her heart is broken,” he says. And, of course, “she’s devastated again by Ridge.”

Ridge Forrester, the handsome and powerful magnate behind Forrester Creations Empire, occupies one critical point of one of the soap world’s most dramatic love triangles alongside Wagner’s Nick and Lang’s Brooke. The character was originated in 1987 by Ronn Moss, who departed from the sudser in 2012, the same year as Wagner. He’s been played since then by Thorsten Kaye, whose Ridge is apart of another thorny romantic entanglement with Rebecca Budig’s Taylor Hayes.

Taylor has lately gained back favor with Ridge’s heart, leaving Brooke reeling. “So he has one primary motivation, and that is to wake Brooke up to the fact that she’s locked in this obsessive pattern with Ridge,” Wagner says.

That’s great for Nick, but what’s in the return for Wagner? “To come back and just kind of lock in with Kelly was great,” he says. “It’s like we haven’t missed a beat. I compare it to hopping on a moving train, because of the speed soaps work at now. But it’s also like a class reunion. You get to catch up, and you hug, and you share.”

Wagner’s also eager to shake up a character who’s lain dormant for over a decade. When asked to name the biggest change Nick’s undergone since 2012, Wagner responds, “Confidence. This is a complete, total, one objective, one motivation return. And so with that came confidence and an unmovable quality to this character. That gave me a chance to think, ‘How do I want to play this?’ One would be charming and flip, and another one would be poignant and direct… it just gave me those opportunities to be flexible in the scene work.”

The biggest outlet for Nick to flex his newfound confidence is in his prickly reunion with his old romantic rival. “When Ridge comes into the scenes, what I wanted was to make Nick unmoved. There is zero fear in this character. And that gave me the opportunity for comedy. When Ridge was there, it was almost like he sees a fly on his shoulder. He just kind of swats the fly, which gave Thorsten stuff to play with, because nobody treats him that way.”

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Aside from the eruption of a long-dormant volcano of romantic rivalry, longing, and betrayal, one of the most exciting aspects of Wagner’s return to Bold and the Beautiful is where it kicks off. The Missouri-born actor recently married singer-songwriter Michelle Wolf after four years of dating. The pair held their nuptials in Italy, which gave Wagner a great idea.

“So here’s the deal. I’ve belonged to Bel Air Country Club for 40 years. Brad Bell’s a member there. I see Brad occasionally, and about four or five months ago, I said, ‘Hey, Brad, I’m going to Italy this spring. You want me to do any press for the show?’ He goes, ‘Oh God, that’d be great. Yeah, let me think about that.’ And he calls about six weeks later and goes, ‘Hey, what do you think of a summer story arc? I think we can do a location in Naples,’ and I go, ‘Perfect,'” he recalls.

Italy will provide a stunning backdrop to Wagner’s anticipated return. Though it meant he could extend his honeymoon, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Wagner says he “loved” working outside the typical studio setting, but called the on-the-street Italian location shoot “guerilla TV. I mean, it is guerilla TV, and fans start to gather, and you shoot through the fans, with the fans, and it’s not like a movie set where you’ve got things blocked off. You kind of are winging it… We’re kind of making things work as we go, which is okay, it will all cut together, but as you’re shooting it, it feels chaotic.”

Wagner is all smiles when asked how it feels to have returned to the loving embrace of his Bold and the Beautiful family. But the gratitude doesn’t stop there. Wagner says he feels “so blessed to have played some characters that people remember from General Hospital and Melrose Place and Bold and the Beautiful and When Calls the Heart. I mean, these are really terrific runs on amazing television shows. So just to still be slugging it out there, I’m very grateful.”

Wagner’s return to The Bold and the Beautiful premieres June 16 at 1:30 p.m. on CBS, and streams on Paramount+.