The Bold and the Beautiful’s Sheila Carter has defied death once again and no one is more surprised than her portrayer, Kimberlin Brown, who thought her alter ego’s demise in February was the real deal. “Brad [Bell, executive producer/head writer] called me up to his office and he just told me, ‘We’re going to be killing off your character,’” she recalls. “It kind of sucked the air out of the room for me. But I knew the day was coming. I knew that it couldn’t last forever. I was just really thankful that it lasted as long as it did.”
So Brown was understandably thrilled to receive a call a mere few weeks after Sheila’s death played out on screen, inviting her back to the soap. “I truly believe that [with] the fan outcry when they killed me off and the stories [in the press] that went viral, in addition to what happened with the ratings and things like that, I think Brad reevaluated and listened to our fan base and that’s when he decided to bring me back,” she shares. “That’s only my opinion, of course. but I’m just thrilled to death that I got that phone call because this is my happy place and what I love to do. I love Sheila. She’s a part of me. She’s my baby, and the thought of never playing her again was devastating for me.”
Brown says she was amazed by the viewers’ reaction to Sheila’s death. “Quite honestly, I wasn’t expecting it,” she admits. “I’m a very normal person. I get up, I go to work in the morning and go home and with my family and memorize my lines. And you hear stories that people say, ‘Oh, you’re an icon in daytime,’ but I’ve never looked at myself that way. I’ve never looked at myself that way at all. I looked at myself as being very fortunate to have been in the position that I was, to play this character for so long. And when [TV Insider] broke the story [of her exit in February], I started getting all these direct messages on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, and I’m not going to lie, there were stories that people sent me and comments that people gave me that moved me to tears. I mean, of course, there were the handful of people that were like, ‘Thank God she’s gone,’ but most of the fans said how sad they were to see me go and how they were going to miss the excitement that I brought to the show and that unpredictable side of Sheila. So it was a real emotional moment for me to see everybody say the wonderful things that they said.”
Her return, like many of her prior comebacks, was kept strictly under wraps. “I parked in the back where nobody could see me,” she relays. “They didn’t call me Kimberlin when they called me to set, I’m Dana, and it’s been kept fairly hush, hush. I was asked to keep a secret, and I’m definitely the person that could do that. I know how important that is to a storyline when you want to surprise your audience.”
To resurrect Sheila, Bell went back into her history and made the actual victim Sugar, a deadringer for Sheila whom Brown played from 2005-2006 on sister show The Young and the Restless. “I thought it was brilliant,” Brown cheers. “Brad told me that something was coming and that he was doing research. Sheila is the gift that just keeps giving and Brad is the one that keeps giving her the presents. I’m so lucky to play the character that I play and to be able to not be safe. I was always encouraged to never play her safe, to not be afraid to get outside the box. And this is one time that Brad didn’t get outside the box, he jumped outside the box.”
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Because she hadn’t portrayed Sugar in years, Brown had to do some research of her own. “I actually asked production to send me some of my old Sugar scenes because it had been so, so long since I played her,” she relays. “And sure enough, they sent me three shows and I only had to look at the first one to remember, ‘Oh, my God, that’s exactly what I did.’ I was just bigger than life as Sugar.”
Expect Deacon (Sean Kanan) and Finn (Tanner Novlan) to be thrilled to have Sheila back. The rest of the canvas? Not so much. “Well, she’s greeted with love and open arms by Deacon and Finn,” Brown allows. “But everybody else? They’re going to be shocked to say the least and it’s an interesting group of people that come by and the reactions are going to be fun to watch. There might be some people falling on the floor. Let’s just put it that way.”
As to whether or not viewers should expect a new version of Sheila, Brown teases, “Sheila has definitely changed and grown, but there are still obstacles in her life, and obstacles have always put Sheila in positions that are not always healthy.”
