HOLLYWOOD—This week’s Leading Ladies Gold Standard goes to Cristel Khalil, who portrays Lily Winters Ashby on CBS’s “The Young and the Restless”; Susan Flannery, who portrays Stephanie Forrester; and Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, who portrays Steffy Forrester. Both Flannery and Forrester are on CBS’s “The Bold and the Beautiful.” All three women portray characters that were in emotional pain this week, for different reasons. However, each of them played the emotions they faced brilliantly.
Beautiful Cristel Khalil as Lily is dealing with the murder of the love of her life, Cane Ashby. Lily witnessed her husband being gunned down on the steps of a church in Genoa City by a mobster named Blake. However, her grief has been uncontrollable and her anger and rage immeasurable. Lily has twins to raise without the man she loves, and she is still having hallucinations and visions that he’s in the room with her, even though she must realize that Cane is truly gone. Khalil has been nominated for an Emmy Award® for her excellent work in the past, and she’s doing a great job as the grieving widow on the soap.
Susan Flannery, known as a force of nature as an actress, is extraordinary as a changed Stephanie who has forgiven Brooke Logan for her sins against the Forrester matriarch and who is trying to help the homeless population in Los Angeles. However, Susan’s poignant scenes when she explained to her granddaughter Steffy that her reasons for changing and becoming more forgiving and giving to others is a direct result of surviving stage four lung and brain cancer made viewers tear up. The outstanding work of the blue eyed thespian is legendary. Fans are dying to see what will happen when Stephanie is eventually tested again. Will she choose charity in her heart or a return of the woman best known as the Beverly Hills human steam roller?
The work of Jacqueline MacInnes Wood is becoming even better than when she left “B&B” last year to do a film. When Steffy returned to find that her grandmother and best friend Stephanie had forgiven their mutual nemesis Brooke, the pain on the character’s face seemed genuine. Young actress Wood can do just about anything. Seeing her prepare for revenge against Brooke even though her grandmother may have forgiven Brooke her many sins was priceless to watch. Every effort this young leading lady makes pays off to viewers in a big way.
“Y&R” and “B&B” both air weekdays on CBS.
Photographs are Courtesy: Cristel Khalil by JPI Studios© West Hollywood and Susan Flannery and Jacqueline MacInnes Wood by Gilles Toucas, Bell Phillip TV Productions.
