B&B’s John McCook on Keeping Eric’s Fate a Secret

As soon as Eric became ill on THE BOLD & THE BEAUTIFUL fans began to worry. And when the doctor gave him a terminal diagnosis, they feared the worst. While the Forrester patriarch is now on the mend, things were looking pretty dicey there for a while. Of course, John McCook was thrilled by how invested everyone became in his character’s fate!

“There’s been so much internet chat,” the actor admitted to Soap Opera Digest. “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!’ It’s very involving and people are really responding a lot to the story and that’s great! That’s great for us.”

Of course, in order to keep that momentum going, the cast had to keep quiet about the fact that Eric would eventually receive a miracle cure that would save his life. “We weren’t saying, ‘Well, he’s gonna be okay,’ or ‘Yeah, that’s just the end’ — we’re not confirming or denying anything,” McCook explained. “We’re just letting [what’s happening on screen 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!’”

Following a five-year run as Lance Prentiss on THE YOUNG & THE RESTLESS, McCook joined the cast of B&B in 1987 and has been playing Eric Forrester since the very first episode. So for longtime fans, the idea of the family losing its leader was absolutely heartbreaking. Thankfully, that day has not yet come and there’s still much more story to tell with the character.

“We’re going to begin this whole new beat in Eric’s life,” McCook previewed, “which is trying to recover from this major medical episode. And I think that’s going to be more of Eric and Donna trying to be healthy together.”