OBSESSED: B&B's Matthew Atkinson talks taking Thomas to some super dark places

Is there no end to Thomas' evil? The Bold and the Beautiful's Matthew Atkinson discusses his alter ego's bad side and his scary obsession with Hope (Annika Noelle).

Viewers of The Bold and the Beautiful have watched as Thomas Forrester falls deeper and deeper into the depths of evil (they've also watched him fall into a vat of what was believed to be acid, but that's neither here nor there). The character is obsessively pursuing Hope (Annika Noelle) and has even used his own son, Douglas (Henry Joseph Samiri), in his efforts to sink his hooks into the Logan lady. But it doesn't stop at snatching Hope as his own; Thomas is also hoping to obliterate the marriage between Brooke (Katherine Kelly Lang) and his dad, Ridge (Thorsten Kaye). Which begs the question: is there an end in sight?

Thomas's portrayer, Matthew Atkinson, recently answered that very question, and the answer is NO!

"You never know with daytime because stories can go in a couple of different ways. I've experienced that before. You get the exciting times and the happy times. It seems with Thomas Forrester it's always an exciting time," the actor tells TV Insider. "He's got his manipulation tactics and relationships. It's so much fun for me to play."

Atkinson didn't know, however, that Thomas was going to become such a B&B bad boy. And the more scripts he read after joining the CBS soap earlier this year, the more he kept exclaiming, "Whoa!"

"I didn't really know anything [about where the story was going] when I came on," he recalls. "I knew he was going to be in the middle of this baby storyline that was going on at the time. I knew that Thomas was going to see Hope as this mother figure for his son and he wanted her. Each time I got a script I went, 'Wow!' 'Whoa!' and 'Here we go!' As I began to realize the trajectory of this character, I learned exactly where his head space was and how he had these deep wounds from his past with his parents and Caroline's [Linsey Godfrey] death. All of that had put him in a bad place."

So bad of a place that viewers have watched Thomas threaten his own son -- which has been uncomfortable, to say the least. But, as Atkinson points out, not unredeemable.

"He never went to any real extremes depending on how you look at it. He never hit his son, but yes, he did get angry at him and scare him," the actor says, adding that he particularly enjoyed the resulting scene in which Douglas told his father that he knows there is a good guy deep down in him. "[Douglas reaching out to his father] was huge. Thomas asked himself, 'Who am I now?' That brought him back to reality. He's still Thomas Forrester, who will do almost anything, but he does have a [conscience]. I'm very glad that [Henry and I] had that scene. It gave the audience a chance to see him in that moment."

For more from Atkinson on Thomas' behavior and where the storyline goes from here, check out TV Insider's full article here.

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Atkinson got his start in soap operas playing the role of Austin Travers on The Young and the Restless from 2014 to 2015. He joined B&B in March of 2019, an opportunity that followed jobs on shows like Powerless, Young & Hungry, The Middle, and One Tree Hill.

What do you think about the dark direction that the B&B writers have chosen for Thomas? Where do you hope the character's storyline goes from here? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.

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