‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ Star John McCook Speaks Out After Eric Forrester’s Medical Miracle
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After being on his deathbed for weeks on The Bold and the Beautiful, John McCook‘s Eric Forrester had a Christmas miracle over the holidays and is now on the road to recovery.
On the Friday, December 22, episode, with his family gathered around his hospital bed, Eric’s ventilator was removed, and he started breathing on his own again. His first words? A mumbled “Merry Christmas” to his loved ones.
The miraculous recovery came after weeks of speculation over whether the show was about to kill off the iconic character, who has been with the series since the very first episode on March 23, 1987.
Eric first started coughing up blood back in the October episodes, and Dr. Colin Colby (Justin Davis) gave the Forrester patriarch only six months to live.
“There’s been so much Internet chat,” McCook told Soap Opera Digest in a new interview. “I’ve been getting these congratulatory messages from people in, you know, Iowa, who say, ‘Congratulations on your long career,’ and people mourning the loss of Eric Forrester and I’m just going, ‘This is great!’ You know, it’s very involving and people are really responding a lot to the story and that’s great! That’s great for us.”
Bill Inoshita/CBS
The 79-year-old actor has starred in the series for 36 years, winning the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2022 after four previous nominations.
When asked about how viewers were invested in the fate of his character, McCook said, “It buoys my spirit. It really does. And we weren’t saying [either], ‘Well, he’s gonna be okay,’ or, ‘Yeah, that’s just the end’ — we’re not confirming or denying anything. We’re just letting it speak for itself.”
“The only people I can’t lie to about it are the people I see in the market. They go, ‘Are you dying?!’ And I’m just saying, ‘No, I feel a lot better on the weekends.,” he quipped.
As for what’s next for his character, McCook shared, “We’re going to begin this whole new beat in Eric’s life, which is trying to recover from this major medical episode. And I think that’s going to be more of Eric and Donna (Jennifer Gareis) trying to be healthy together.”
McCook added that there are a lot of questions about how Eric will react during his recovery journey, whether he’ll “go back to his regular self” or “change who he is.”
“Is he going to have a sense of humor, or is he going to lose his sense of humor? Is he going to get more aggressive with people, or is he going to be angry that Ridge (Thorsten Kaye) let the machines keep him alive? Is he going to resent that? Is he going to be happy and thankful?” he continued.
“I don’t know the answers to that yet. I haven’t talked to our writers or producers about that yet. So these are big questions about how the story is going to go,” McCook said.
The long-tenured actor said it would be exciting to open the next script and see Eric’s attitude change but also noted that might not be what’s best for the show.
“I’m looking forward to seeing what Eric is going to be like and what his relationships are going to be like and what it’s going to be like for Eric and Donna in their house as he recovers — or does he recover, you know?” he added “Does he lose anything during this week or two when he’s down? I don’t know, but those are good questions for the show.”
