The Bold and the Beautiful actress Lisa Yamada has finally settled into her role as Luna after joining the long-running soap last year, but those first few days on set were daunting.
Speaking with SoapOperaDigest, Yamada opened up about her experience on the show, revealing the crew “totally hazed” her on her second week on set by giving her “45 pages of dialogue in one day.”
“I was going to cry. The night before, I was like, ‘I can’t do this! I don’t know. They think too much of me. There’s no way I can do this!’” she recalled.
However, she received some much-needed advice and a confidence boost from soap opera veteran John McCook, who has portrayed Bold and the Beautiful patriarch Eric Forrester since the show’s first episode in 1987.
“I’ll never forget this,” Yamada continued. “John McCook told me, ‘Just take it one scene at a time. You don’t have to memorize all of it. Just know it and take your time with it, and if you need [more] time, they’ll be okay with it. They’ll give you the time that you need.’”
McCook’s pep talk worked, as Yamada explained, “That day, I killed it! 45 pages of dialogue! I was in [the studio working] from the beginning of the day until the end of the day. I was so exhausted, but it was so much fun!”
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She added, “And after I got that over with, I was like, ‘Okay, if I can do that, I can do anything!’ And even though I did feel like I was being hazed, honestly, it was for the best because now whenever I see that I have a ton of scenes to do on one day, I’m like, ‘Okay, I’ve done it before and I can do it again.’”
Yamada joined the show as Luna, a college student in fashion design who arrives at Forrester Creations surrounded by mystery with a secret. Before joining the soap, she starred in the second season of Freeform’s Cruel Summer and had appearances in Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere, Prime Video’s The Kicks, CW’s All American, ABC’s Promised Land, and CBS’ Man With A Plan and Extant.
Since joining the Bold and the Beautiful, Yamada said she has learned a lot just by watching her fellow castmates and how they handle their workload.
“On my first day, I saw a couple of scenes that Annika [Noelle] and Matt [Atkinson] did because their scenes were right before mine. I was watching them on the monitor and that’s when I was like, ‘Oh, wow, I’m in a room full of, like, crazy professionals!’” she shared.
“I mean, they are made for this. They are so talented, and they can pick up direction and lines so quickly, and I just admired them from the jump and I learned a lot from just watching them. I’ve learned so much from the people who have been on the show for so many years,” Yamada continued.
It’s not just the cast that has been a help; Yamada also praised the off-camera crew. “Our stage managers were so welcoming my first week as well,” she said. “And even though they didn’t necessarily teach me how to act in this space, they made me comfortable enough that I could let my guard down and do what I need to do.”
She said the whole production was “really sweet” about her being a newcomer to the world of soaps. “They didn’t just throw me in with the wolves,” she added.
“Even before my first day, one of the producers showed me around the set and explained how everything works and where my dressing room was going to be and how hair and makeup would go,” the actress continued. “They just broke it all down, from the top of the day to the end of the day, so I had an expectation of how the day was going to go. It was so great to get a welcome like that.”
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This story originally appeared on TV Insider
