If The Bold and the Beautiful actress Kimberlin Brown played Sheila Carter as a one-note villainess, the character wouldn’t have survived six months on our screens, let alone over 30 years. But, as evidenced by last week’s episode, that’s not what the Daytime Emmy-nominated star has done at all.
The actress has always brought a nuanced vulnerability to her role along with a capacity to be utterly ruthless and myopic in pursuing her goals. While Sheila has committed all kinds of crimes — baby-stealing, kidnapping, causing Judy to slip on the floor, holding folks at gunpoint, and yes, even shooting them — Brown has played Sheila as a woman who wants one thing in life, and that is to be loved.
TV Insider is bestowing our Daytime Performer of the Week honors on as Brown for shining as Sheila confronted both her husband Deacon (Sean Kanan) and Taylor (Rebecca Budig) in a series of dramatic episodes.
Sheila finally found happiness and love with Deacon, who saw past Sheila’s wicked ways. Sheila was…happy, quite possibly for the first time ever.
© Howard Wise/jpistudios.com
Alas, Sheila’s granddaughter Luna (Lisa Yamada) murdered two people — hottie Hollis (Hollis W. Chambers) and Tom (Clint Howard) — who were near and dear to Deacon. Sheila’s support of Luna caused a rift in her relationship with Deacon. He sought counseling from Taylor, a noted psychiatrist, and fell in love with her in the process. Sheila discovering their affair led viewers to suspect that Sheila would revert to her wicked ways.
Sheila disguised herself as a nurse to infiltrate the hospital where Taylor worked. Was donning a nurse’s outfit a convenient disguise or a sign that Sheila was going to revert to her wicked ways as we first met her as a nurse over on sister soap The Young and the Restless, where her reign of terror began?
Taylor, naturally, feared for her life when Sheila revealed that she knew about Deacon and Taylor’s relationship. But Sheila wasn’t going to let Taylor get with playing the injured party as she, not Sheila, was the adulteress.
The tag for Monday’s episode had Sheila wielding a circular pizza cutter and her hacking away at Taylor or a defenseless pizza — that, like Sue Ann Nivens’ chocolate soufflé, had never harmed anyone!
We learned the next day that Sheila vented her frustrations on the pizza. (Whew!) But she wasn’t letting Taylor off the hook by any means.
“You want to see me turn into that monster that you think I am. Who is the real monster in this room?” Sheila rhetorically asked Taylor. “Is it the person that put her trust in someone, or is it that someone who betrayed that trust in the worst possible way?”
Upon returning home, Deacon couldn’t help but notice that Sheila was back in a nurse’s uniform. He queried, as this wasn’t Halloween, if Sheila was going back to her days as “Nurse Carter.”
“Yeah, maybe I am,” responded Sheila, as Brown infused the line with a resigned defeat. Everyone expects Sheila to revert to her evil ways. Why shouldn’t she?
But Brown played something far different than Sheila going on another violent tirade in which people got shot or fell off a balcony. Incorporating how Deacon’s love had changed her, Sheila played lost and lonely, not filled with vengeance.
Concerned for Taylor’s safety upon learning that Sheila had gone to the hospital, Brown played her character’s dismay that her husband’s thoughts went to his lover – and not his wife.
“I saw a lot more than that,” Sheila responded to Deacon asking her if he’d seen Taylor.
“I saw you,” Sheila continued. “And I saw you touch her with such tenderness that was supposed to be given to me. And I saw the way that you looked at her and that look is supposed to be mine.”
Rather than have Sheila explode with fury at Deacon, Brown had her character make a totally different choice – she threw herself at his mercy, begging for him to take her back.
“Just go ahead and lie to me, Deacon. Please. Because I’ll believe you,” Sheila said. “How could you do this to us, and when did you decide that I was no longer worthy of your love?”
Deacon had every right to wonder if Taylor was OK, but his voicing his concern over that only made Sheila feel worse. “Why wouldn’t she be?” Sheila responded. “You’ve always told me that I’m not a monster, and yet that’s what you see. Do you really think I could go back to my old ways and hurt her? Is that what you think of me?”
© Howard Wise/jpistudios.com
Brown played Sheila as a woman who was betrayed not once, but twice by her husband. There’s the whole falling for Taylor and having sex with her, but Sheila was also devastated to learn that Deacon so easily believed that she’d gone back to the worst version of herself.
A big reason Deacon’s betrayal hurt Sheila so much was that she saw him as her knight in shining armor. When she’d been kidnapped by Sugar, her evil doppelgänger, and left for dead, she pointed out that Deacon did not give up on her.
“You kept looking for me,” she reminded him. “You found me.” Brown delivered that line beautifully, pointing out that Deacon didn’t just “locate” her by finding her, but he discovered something in her that no other man ever had. This is why losing him hurts so much.
In fairness to Deacon and others who fail to think that Sheila can change, Brown didn’t totally abandon Sheila’s unpredictability. There’s still a part of the naughty nurse that could turn violent on a moment’s notice. This is why the actress’ performances are so compelling and her performances last week should be remembered when next year’s Daytime Emmy reels are being assembled.
Brava to Brown for playing Sheila both as an unpredictable force and a woman, who just wants desperately to be loved.
The Bold and the Beautiful, Weekdays, CBS
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