‘The Bold Type’: Melora Hardin on Jacqueline’s Vacation, Trusting Jane and Singing

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Bold Type Season 5 Episode 4 “Day Trippers.”]

Melora Hardin got to do something in the June 16 episode of The Bold Type she’d wanted to for a while: sing. No, the Freeform drama didn’t turn out a musical episode (as she’d hoped to one day do), but she did get musical as Jacqueline when Jane (Katie Stevens) micro-dosed and saw her boss leading a meeting in song.

Related

'The Bold Type' Stars on Richard's Shocking News for Sutton, [Spoiler]'s Exit & More

That comes as Jacqueline reveals to Oliver (Stephen Conrad Moore) she and her husband Ian (Hardin’s real-life husband Gildart Jackson) are taking a vacation for 17 days and she’s going to have Jane fill in while she’s away. Jane has, after all, been proving herself as she’s led her own vertical, The Failing Feminist, and managing her own team of writers.

TV Insider spoke with Hardin on getting the chance to sing on The Bold Type, Season 5, and that much-needed vacation.

First of all, I was so happy to hear Jacqueline talking about taking a vacation for 17 days because she needs it!

Melora Hardin: [Laughs] Yes, she does. Don’t we all?

Especially after everything she and Ian have been through these past few seasons, they need this time away, right?

Yeah, they sure do. They need some time together.

Freeform/Nino Munoz

What does it say about how much Jacqueline trusts and how she feels about the Scarlet team that she’s taking this amount of time away from the office?

I think that she feels she’s really built great relationships and she has confidence in their abilities that she’s led them and let them fail, but helped support them and guide them in the right direction. And she feels like they’re ready. It’s a big, risky move for her personally. It’s a hard thing to do for Jacqueline personally, but I think that she’s sort of bolstering herself for, “It’s all gonna work out. It’s all going to be good. It’s going to be fine. Look at that. She’s handled that well, they handled that well. We’re good. We’re good to go.”

What does it say about how she feels about her life away from work that she’s making the time for the vacation?

The whole season has been about her grappling with the balance of work and love and home life, what that is and how to do that. And then also just considering what’s important ultimately, where she feels she needs to put her attention.

Freeform/Jonathan Wenk

Especially because the two clashed with each other earlier in the season with the States & Nations story.

Yes, for sure. But I also really loved that Ian and Jacqueline sort of made that decision together as grownups, two people that love each other and have a history together and have a family together. So you see that she’s not spiteful about the whole thing that happened with Nicole [Cindy Sampson] at States & Nations. It’s just a fact. She also had her own kind of wandering, with her old relationship with Miles [Scott Cohen] to sort of see how it felt. I think that was good for both of them and going out helped them come back together in a different way. That’s what you’re seeing in Season 5: what she’s learned and what he’s learned and what they’ve learned and how they’re choosing each other.

Then there’s the serious trust she’s putting in Jane to be her while she’s on vacation. What has Jacqueline seen in her over the years, and especially this season as Jane has stepped into a managerial role with her vertical, that makes her the right person?

I think that Jacqueline has become — for sure, she’s a mentor — kind of a mother almost to Jane. Jacqueline doesn’t have daughters, she has sons. I think that she really sees some of her younger self in Jane and Jane is ambitious and really wants this. She has been working hard for it, and she keeps showing up in a way that impresses Jacqueline and makes her feel confident that this is something she can handle.

Freeform/Jonathan Wenk

There was that fun moment where Jane saw Jacqueline singing the meeting after she micro-dosed. Talk about filming that scene?

[Laughs] Oh my goodness. That was just super fun. I’ve been pushing the writers since the beginning to write a musical episode because everybody on the show is an incredible singer. I’ve been on Broadway, Meghann [Fahy]’s been on Broadway. Katie comes from American Idol. Aisha [Dee] has a beautiful voice. My husband, who plays my husband on the show, can sing. Matt Ward [who plays Alex] is an incredible dancer. I’ve been trying to say, “Please, can we please sing on the show?” So I think that was really the writers’ very sweet effort to say, “OK, well, we can’t really get the musical episode in, but we’re going to get you singing.” It was very sweet and very funny. I just loved that they were kind of trying to make my little dream come true, which we couldn’t quite fulfill in the universe of The Bold Type.

How much are we going to see Jacqueline showing Jane the ropes beyond that meeting?

You have some surprises in store and you’ll certainly see some more deep conversations with Jacqueline and Jane.

Freeform/Nino Munoz

In Episode 503, Jacqueline found out about Andrew [Adam Capriolo] having to work another job because of pay and to pay his bills. Are we going to see that come up again or anything else come up in terms of what’s going on at the company that Jacqueline may not realize she should have been aware of?

I think that was really the way that we wanted to round out the Andrew character and give him a little more dimension in that last season where you can feel that he’s used to sort of making everything OK and just being on the surface and he needed to get that confidence to be able to share with his boss, to be able to say, “This isn’t working for me.” It’s not so much a commentary on Jacqueline not being able to see what’s going on in the company as much as it’s a commentary on Andrew not being able to speak up, not being able to actually communicate where he is struggling and asking. That’s a thing that comes with maturity, the ability to ask for help where you need help.

I love that dynamic between those two characters, and that was such a good scene.

Yeah. It is fun and it’s nice to round it out that way so that you see that even though they sometimes have just, “Would you please just do it?” they have sort of those moments. You also see that there’s a lot of love there.

The Bold Type, Wednesdays, 10/9c, Freeform