#‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ using blowup dolls for sex scenes in new episodes

CBS soap “The Bold and the Beautiful” will use a female blowup doll and actors’ significant others in love scenes to shoot its first episodes since the pandemic shutdown in mid-March.

The quirky, imaginative steps are being taken to adhere to state, county and industry protocols regarding COVID-19 — as “B&B” became the first US broadcast series to go back into production Wednesday at Television City in LA.

“When we were reviewing the scripts we started taking out all the romantic scenes and [the scripts] just fell flat,” the show’s executive producer/head writer Bradley Bell tells The Post. “We put our heads together trying to figure out a way to make these scenes work without breaking the eight-foot [distancing] rule … and we brought out a doll we used years ago as a corpse.

“We posed it and it was very convincing,” he says. “It’s a great doll and we’ll be using her with hair and makeup as a stand-in to match some of our leading ladies.”

Bell says there’s only the one doll — for now.

“We’re going to see how it works,” he says. “We may be investing in more dolls and male dolls. We’re searching Web sites and combing Hollywood to see what’s available — so we may be employing a lot of dolls in future love scenes.”

“The Bold and the Beautiful,” which is known for some of the more racy scenes in daytime, will also use the spouses of some of the show’s actors in some scenes, Bell says.

“We had the idea that, if [the actors] can’t touch one other and you can’t seem them in a tight embrace then that’s a real problem,” he says. “So we thought to reach out to some of the husbands and wives of the actors and ask them if they would be body doubles in the kissing scenes. Some of them were interested; we’ve had stunt doubles before but this is the first time we’ve had kissing doubles.

“They’ll be tested [for COVID] and we’ll make sure it’s safe and the husband and wife are comfortable kissing,” he says, “and so we may have some very hot kissing on the show. With camera tricks and editing, it will appear as though it’s our leading man with his leading lady.”

Bell says the show last filmed on March 13. “At that point we thought it might be a few weeks. We had no idea,” he says. “I was always in communication with the production team and the cast and along the way I was writing memos saying, ‘It looks like we’ll be back May 1’ then it was ‘May 15’ then ‘June 15’ and now our day has finally come.”

“We’re taking every precautions and making sure we adhere to all the guidelines of the state, county and [the industry unions] DGA and SAG-AFTRA,” he says. “We’ll have a limited number of people on the stage at any time and we’ve reconfigured our control booth. We’re separating the directors, who will all be six feet apart with plexiglass between them and we’ve moved our lighting crew to an auxiliary room and separated them with plexiglass.

“All the actors are wearing masks unless they’re shooting scenes,” he says. “They will always be a minimum of eight feet apart. We’ve gone through all the scripts and have trimmed some scenes. There won’t be any group scenes and the majority [of scenes] will be with two actors and occasionally one actor.

“We’re exercising extreme caution.”

Bell says the episodes will pick up immediately following the cliffhanger that aired in mid-March, when Flo (Katrina Bowden) was captured by Sally (Courtney Hope) and held captive while Sally was trying to seduce her boyfriend, Wyatt (Darin Brooks).

“Our current plan is to [eventually] mention the pandemic but not to dive into the full story,” he says. “I think we’ve all lived it. We’ve always been about fantasy and escapism. It’s what we do. We provide our audience with a half hour of romance and fun — and we also bring some heat and steam.

“We’re going to keep the fires stoked here at ‘The Bold and the Beautiful.’ “