‘B&B’ Star Lawrence Saint-Victor on Carter Backlash, Hope vs. Daphne, and Transitioning to Action Thrillers

The Bold and the Beautiful‘s Lawrence Saint-Victor is well aware that the character he plays, Carter Walton, is not everyone’s favorite these days. And that’s just fine with him.

“I love it all. I want all the smoke,” Saint-Victor declares. “I love it because it means people are engaged, it means people are into the story. And if they feel like Carter threw Hope [Logan, Annika Noelle] under the bus, it means they believed in everything he said to her, and he did something that ticked them off. That means they’re invested. I love the good tweets and I love the negative tweets, because the story is doing what it’s supposed to do.”

The actor says he couldn’t have imagined the twists and turns the tale would take when Carter and Hope teamed up to run Forrester Creations late last year. “I didn’t know Carter and Hope supporting each other would lead to taking over the company,” he shares. “I had no idea that Carter’s conscience would start to get the best of him, and he would give the company back and lose the woman he loves. We’re learning this the same way you guys watch it. We open the script and we’re like, ‘What?!’ ”

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Saint-Victor admits he was a bit taken aback by the viewers’ reactions to Carter’s business moves. “I didn’t realize how controversial his decision was going to be until I would see the fan feedback,” he acknowledges. “I knew that he might have been a little naive in thinking he could give the company back and Hope would be fine, but I didn’t realize some fans would be really upset with Carter. When he took over the company, it’s not something he wanted to do, it’s something he felt he had to do. He took no joy out of taking it from them. In his very naive dream scenario, they would all still be able to work together. And then I think as time went on, Carter started asking himself, ‘What is the point of winning if you lose everything? The jewelry line is successful, the fragrance line is successful, and things are working well. We’ve proven that what we’re doing works. Maybe that’s enough.’ I don’t think, in Carter’s mind, he was going to take over the company, and this is the way it would be forever. He figured he would make it a better place, and everybody would eventually assume their positions.”

But it’s that thinking — and his kiss with Daphne Rose [Murielle Hilaire] — that ended his romance with Hope. “Carter is suffering his consequences because nothing is right,” he points out. “He’s back as COO, but Hope’s not here. He’s in love with Hope, and I think he’s a little taken aback by how they broke up. I think in his mind, this is something they can work through. With Daphne, I think there’s this undeniable kind of chemistry/connection. She sees him. Carter’s biggest flaw as a human is his feelings of not being loved or being seen, which is why I think he falls in love so fast, and why he’s ready to marry so quick. He’s like, ‘You see me, I have to lock this up.’ ”

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A high point of the storyline was the recent fight between Hope’s dad, Deacon Sharpe (Sean Kanan), and Carter. “Sean is the man,” enthuses Saint-Victor of his costar, who appeared as Mike Barnes in The Karate Kid III and Cobra Kai. “Sean is Mike freaking Barnes, the bad boy of Karate Kid. It was a bucket list thing. We were going over the choreography that day before we shot it, and I’m like, ‘I’m about to do a fight scene with the guy who beat up Danny La Russo [Ralph Macchio], and I’m about to be here fighting with him.’ Sean is the real deal. He’s a real martial artist, and he’s not just a fighter, but he also understands fight choreography and storytelling through the art form. He and our fight choreographer created something very beautiful and so much fun.”

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Saint-Victor also had a lot of fun being a part of BET+‘s The Accused, his first starring role in a TV movie, airing April 10. “It’s an action thriller where a plant geneticist, Dani West [Paige Hurd], gets accused of killing her fiancé, and I play the cop that has to bring her in and take her down,” he describes. “We both realize there’s corruption all around us. I’m a good cop, and I learn that I’m working in a very corrupt police precinct, and she’s a geneticist working for a pharmaceutical company, and she learns this company is underhanded and evil as well. So, these two characters who are at odds will eventually have to work together and save the day.”

The movie was filmed during B&B‘s dark weeks last July, so the timing worked out well for Saint-Victor. Despite working in daytime for nearly 20 years, the actor admits he had some jitters. “I was pretty nervous, just thinking about shooting an entire film and telling this story,” he explains. “The weekend before we started shooting, I was going through my script, and then I was like, ‘Hold on. This isn’t a soap. I don’t have to learn the whole script because we’re not shooting the whole movie tomorrow.’ So then I was like, ‘Oh, I can relax. We’re gonna do, like, five pages a day. This is like a walk in the park compared to the workload that we do on Bold and the Beautiful.’ I had to learn endurance. Daytime is a sprint, one take, go; film is an endurance game. It’s a different muscle, sustaining the emotion for a longer duration of time, so I got to exercise that muscle.”

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Playing a detective was also a new challenge for the actor. “I did a lot of research on detectives and homicide detectives just to see how they see the world,” Saint-Victor shares. “We see a lot of them on TV, and they’re usually these hardcore aggressive types, or you see the good cop, bad cop routine. When I was doing my research, I found that a lot of these detectives were warm and genuine, so I really leaned into the idea of being a friend and connected to that quality of being the hero.”

Saint-Victor says he enjoyed working alongside Hurd. “She is amazing,” he raves. “She was number one on the call sheet, and I was two, so she carried so much and set the entire tone of production. We refer to each other as No. 1 and No. 2, Batman and Robin, Jordan and Pippin. We became really great friends shooting and still are now.”

BET+

He’s even more intimate with the actress playing his wife in the film — Shay Saint-Victor, his real-life spouse. “So I booked the role and we were shooting in New York,” he explains of how she was cast. “I had the whole family there, and they were like, ‘How about Shay play your wife?’ My wife is an actress, so she was able to just jump in, but it was bizarre because she’s pregnant in the film, and she was wearing this belly the whole time. I’m like, ‘This is bringing back so many memories.’ [The two have a son, Christian, 6.] But my wife is also a musician and singer, so she actually wound up writing two songs for the film, one with MC Lyte. So yeah, Shay got herself in this thing. She’s all over the place!”

With a full plate on B&B — Saint-Victor is also one of its writers — and off, the actor marvels that his soap journey started nearly 20 years ago when he was cast as Guiding Light‘s Remy Boudreau. “I am so fortunate and feel so grateful to just be here and embraced by CBS Daytime,” he reflects. “My entire adult life has pretty much been involved with CBS Daytime, and it’s been so good to me. To still be here and be involved with The Bold and the Beautiful, getting to write and act, it’s a dream.”

The Bold and the Beautiful, Weekdays, CBS, Check Local Listings

The Accused, Streaming, Thursday, April 10, BET+