travel plans

B&B’s Executive Producer/Head Writer Bradley Bell and Y&R’s Co-Executive Producer/Head Writer Josh Griffith reveal how they coordinated the crossover episodes.

Soap Opera Digest: How did the idea of the crossover come about? Who pitched it to whom?

Josh Griffith: When we thought about bringing Sally to Genoa City, and we found out that she left L.A. under a cloud of trouble, it seemed like it was a natural that we would try to work out a way so we could cross the shows and cross that story, have people from our show looking into her background in trying to get dirt on her. Summer and Kyle were interacting with her a lot and she was starting to cause trouble for Summer, so what better way to get a crossover than have Summer say, “I’m going to L.A. and find out everything I can about Sally Spectra.” And then we talked it through and worked out what we wanted to do and saw a way that we both could have a crossover with Y&R people going to L.A. and L.A. people coming to Genoa City, and it just all seemed to fall in place, easily and perfectly.

Bradley Bell: I’m thrilled to be working with you on this, and historically we’ve been doing these over the years. The first one may have been Sheila but the characters have been going back and forth, and it shows the ongoing relationships of these two shows, and we had a great time coming up with this together. It’s great to see Sally Spectra, who started with Darlene Conley as Rose DeVille on YOUNG AND RESTLESS, then came to BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL as Sally Spectra and then sadly passed, the one and only Darlene, and then to have Courtney Hope take on the name and take the character from B&B to Y&R, it feels like it has all come full circle.

Digest: Brad, you created this version of Sally.