Scott Turner Schofield – The Bold and the Beautiful

By: Lisa Stienberg

Q) What are the recent projects you are working on?

A) When I got “The Bold and The Beautiful,” we put some other projects on the fast track to use the visibility of the show. But we’ve been working on the web series for a while and the one man show I’ll be doing in Los Angeles. I’ve been doing that show for seven years, touring it all over the world.

Q) How did you get involved in working on the show?

A) They decided to make a transgender storyline and they made the very “bold and beautiful” move of making one of their major stars transgender. That means it isn’t like someone gets pregnant, has a baby and then it’s done. They are going to be transgender for the rest of the time she is on the show and actually has been transgender this entire time, which puts a whole spin on things. Because they were using an actor who was not transgender before the role, they decided they wanted to do the next right thing and put a transgender actor in a transgender role. This is a twist that is not really done, ever. It has been done a couple of times, but it is not what mainstream really does. They tend to let non-transgender actors play those roles, which has been a real sore spot for those of us in the transgender community because we are sort of stuck. People don’t believe we can play non-transgender roles because they know that we are transgender. Then, they don’t even want to let us play transgender roles. The really bold move on Bradley Bell’s part, the Executive Prodcucer, we’re going to do the right thing by hiring a transgender actor. They called up GLAAD and they had a short list of transgender actors they knew of and I was on the list. I had just moved to Los Angeles with my fiancée. We had just gotten engaged and within two weeks Christy Dooley, casting director, called me to see if I was in LA and wanted to audition. I went in to audition and she gave me an immediate call back. I went up in front of the producers and it just really blew my mind that this would happen. It’s been a real Hollywood dream story. The whole time it has been wonderful.

Q) How is your character introduced into the story?

A) I play a guy named Nick, who turns out is the old best friend of Maya (Karla Mosley), who is one of the stars on the show. I come into her life when she had just moved to Los Angeles and was in early transition into a transgender person. We met at a support group and I was that guy for her. That’s a very true story. With transgender people, somebody will find their way to you and say, “Look I’m also transgender and I don’t know what to do.” Because you have been there before, you help them because you know. You tell them that there is nothing wrong with them and here are some of the steps to transitioning your body (if that’s what you want to do). So, I’m just kind of a friend and mentor to her in that way. When her boyfriend wants to propose to her and she realizes it, she gets upset because she has not disclosed to him that she is transgender. Everyone is freaking out about that on social media. How could you go so long? They live together so they definitely have slept together. People are just freaking out and saying she’s a liar or it’s unforgivable deceit. That’s the thing that straight people think since they have no experience being transgender. If I show up in life as a man, I am a man in every aspect of my life. I have a medical history that says that I was once a woman in my past, am I lying to you if I didn’t tell you that? What if you had major abdominal surgery and it changed the way you ate in the world? Do you have to tell everyone? It’s something you reveal to people over time. For me, I want to because it is helpful to the world. If I met you and we became friends, I probably wouldn’t tell you I was transgender until a couple months into knowing each other. It probably wouldn’t come up and I don’t know you. What if you turn around and are horrible to me? I have to feel you out. So, I don’t want to hear that if you’re transgender that you’re lying to people if you don’t tell everybody from the start. That’s something that only straight people say because they have no idea what it means to be transgender so therefore they shouldn’t be saying anything at all. I do look at the ignorant comments online though so I can help educate people. We actually show our truth faith every day. One of my favorite monologues from “The Bold and the Beautiful” is when I’m explaining to Maya’s boss not to fire her. That’s a reality transgender people face all the time. If you’re white and transgender, you are twice as likely to be unemployed. If you’re a person of color and transgender, you are four times as likely to be unemployed. Her boss is like, “She lied to us. Well, gay people take big pride in coming out.” I’m like, “First of all, she’s not gay.” That’s the other misconception – that a transgender woman is just a gay man. Gay men find that to be a big problem as well. The idea is that gay people have to hide something because oppression is what it is. You can still be fired for being gay! Coming out means you have been hiding yourself to show who you are. For transgender people, it’s about our bodies. Our whole bodies change and we wear our truth every day. There is no hiding when you are transgender.

Q) For your character, did you have any input or say in the formation of your character?

A) It was amazing. I really didn’t have to. This is something that never happens. When I met Bradley Bell, he said to me, “I want you to know, if there is anything in the script at all that you think isn’t right then I want you to let someone know and we’ll change. We’re out to do this correctly.” Although there are no transgender people on the writing team, at least one of the writers (who I happened to know through a friend) is very involved in the transgender community. He was really able to represent the story properly and then they took it to GLAAD. GLAAD looked it over and would say, “This is appropriate,” or “This is not appropriate.” So, by the time it got to me it had been done so perfectly in ways that I just wanted to stand up an applaud. I couldn’t believe it was being said on television. And it’s such a bummer that people aren’t taking daytime TV as seriously. Something happened on TV that has never happened on television history. We changed the game for transgender representation. Nobody in the United States really takes daytime TV seriously. We have many viewers, but people kind of poo-poo it. What people don’t realize is that this show has almost thirty million viewers daily world wide. It is the most watched television show on the planet. We are doing transgender representation really right and groundbreaking. I hope people will go to CBS.com and check out what is happening because it is great!

Q) How long will we be getting to see you in the role of Nick?

A) It was advertised as a four episode arc and I have shot six episodes. I have at least two more episodes that are being put on the calendar. So, now I am considered a recurring guest star. I am recurring for as long as they want and I’m very happy to do so.

Q) How has it been getting to work with the cast of “The Bold and the Beautiful?”

A) It’s been wonderful. It turned out that Karla Mosley and I actually have a friend in common. When we met, we kind of chatted and found out we had this friend in common. We were really excited. We’re also both really passionate about theater. It has just been great. Then, Thorsten Kaye has some really powerful scenes with me. He just really took me under his wing. He’s really this dude’s dude. He’s just like a hunk. He’s just been so kind. I haven’t done much television acting so he kind of gave me some pointers. He just helped me look good. The guy who plays Eric, John McCook, (the senior patriarch in the family) is an amazing actor and just tweeted something really nice about me. People have this stereotype in older generations. They are less accepting of us and that is just so not the case.

Q) For your transition, what were some of the challenges or negatives when you were going through the process?

A) I think it is so fascinating that people want to talk about the negative aspects. People really do think that this is such a hard story. Yes, hands down, there are really hard things about it. But the things that are hard about transgender is the oppression and prejudice that we have to face that come from other people. That is the biggest thing. What is hard about being transgender is not transgender people. It’s people who aren’t transgender who don’t support us, don’t believe us, fire us, say horrible things about us and make life hard for us. That’s what is hard about being transgender. My transition was the single most positively powerful thing I’ve ever done in my life and I’m so grateful that I had the resources to do it. At the time, I really didn’t have many resources. So, I was able to find a clinic that would give me testosterone for very little money and that allowed me to start my transition without having to go through a year of therapy, going to doctors and getting letters from them saying I’m mentally ill and need to be cured. Again, those are things that people who aren’t transgender have made up to make our lives hard. I got to go to a clinic who accepted that if you showed up and said, “I’m transgender and I really need to transition because being in this body as is is really harming me,” they just said, “Okay. Let’s do it. Let’s get started.” It took me ten years. I was on testosterone for almost ten years before I found a place that I could afford to do any kind of surgery. I have had some surgery, but I won’t go into specifics. My friends helped me pay for it. They held a benefit for me and it was incredibly heartwarming. When I was final able to walk around with my body the way that I felt good. There is no deeper contentment than feeling good in your body. I think a lot of people will agree with that. A lot of people have issues with their bodies and I could actually do something about it. Transition was the best thing that I ever did. It was accepting myself because I knew there was nothing wrong with myself. It was me saying, “This isn’t a phase. It hasn’t gone away.” I knew I was a man my whole life. Having my community accept me that way was incredible. The only thing that was hard was before I transitioned, thinking there was something wrong with me – thinking that there was something bad with me. That was the hard part. The transition is whatever way people want to do it because there are many ways to do it. In whatever ways to get you to feel comfortable with your body is the most powerful and positive thing you will ever do.

Q) What has the response been on social media to your appearance on the show?

A) Everything has been great. I’ve seen four hundred to five hundred tweets from viewers and only two have been negative, but not so negative that they are all I can think about. I was afraid that it would be the other way around with hundreds of negative things and only a couple positive. The thing about the transgender story and why everyone is so excited about it is because it is a really powerful story. It’s about being true to yourself. It’s about transformation. It’s about living your life fully and authentically and everybody wants that. It doesn’t matter if you are transgender or not. Everybody wants to transform into the best version of themselves that they can be. When people see that happening for someone transgender, from my perspective, people get behind that. Yes, there are people who are horrible and ignorant that say mean things, but I’m seeing a lot more people being appreciative.

Q) How do you think the presence and acceptance of transgender individuals has grown?

A) I think it has been getting better and better. We have had little pops here and there. In 2000, we had the Boys Don’t Cry pop. In 2006, we had the “TransAmerica” pop. In 2007, we had the Candis Cayne pop in “Dirty Sexy Money.” They are little pops and flash of light that our community would gather around, but then they would go out. Laverne Cox hit the scene a couple years ago and it has been constant trans, trans, trans. It’s been wonderful to watch and be a part of. To watch people do it better and more and more correctly, where it is not the butt of a joke or someone’s greatest fear or a hate crime…We are seeing transgender people have real lives and do real things. They are real people like everybody else. That’s been the whole goal. All we want is to be real people. If that wouldn’t be so hard…Then, of course, there is web series where the thrust of an episode was about, “We can’t figure out someone’s gender so we’re going to try to figure it out.” People were going into bathrooms and trying to figure it out. I was like, “Really? This is disgusting. How did you make that? How could you be a human with a heart and make that?” So, you take the good with the bad.

Q) People now have more role models in the transgender community these days.

A) That’s the whole point. It took me until I was twenty years old to meet someone who was a transgender man. I had no idea that it existed. So, for twenty years of my life I just thought I was alone and really messed up. I think about what if I had been four years old watching “The Bold and The Beautiful” with my Nana and someone like me showed up and what would my concept of myself be and how would my life been different knowing that this is a thing, this is real. Representation really counts and it is why it is so offensive when people don’t do their homework and don’t do it correctly. You are actually hurting real people.

Q) Please tell us more about your web series.

A) My fiancée is a conservative Midwestern born-again Christian girl. These are all things that she truly is and I’m this queer trans radical yogi. That’s my reality and we are engaged. We figured out how to build a bridge and get over our issues. Myself, as a queer person, had so many issues with Christians and the church because I’ve been hurt by them. Turns out, she is the same way, but still loves Jesus. She thinks you can’t love Jesus though if you don’t also love LGBTQ people. So, we made this web series that is about our relationship. It’s a romantic comedy. It’s a fictional based in truth romantic comedy about what happens when a conservative Midwestern Christian girl falls for a radical transgender queer yogi. We’ve been getting a lot of great feedback from it from the LGBTQ people and the Christian people. They both feel really well represented and love the way we have put these two things together to make space and peace in those worlds. It’s a lot of fun and very, very funny!