Susan Flannery (Stephanie) is not just the talented actress who plays Forrester matriarch Stephanie Forrester -- she also directs episodes of B&B and she has always mentored and supported the younger B&B cast members. Adrienne Frantz (Amber) singles out Susan as one of the most influential people with regard to her acting career. "She taught me so much," said Adrienne. "She totally sticks by you, like when you believe that you're doing the right thing when you're in a scene and you're doing it. Even if everyone else is [in disagreement], Susan will be like, 'No, I totally agree with you.' I definitely always like to do scenes with Susan when I'm doing something a little outrageous, because she'll totally stick by me." This kind of mentoring comes naturally to Susan, not only because she has had many years of TV, film and theater experience, but because she and John McCook (Eric) were the most experienced actors when B&B first began in 1987. "We worked a lot together when Adrienne first came on the show," explained Susan. "She is a very intelligent actor. She thinks things through. And so is Jennifer (Finnigan, Bridget). I direct the whole [cast] and because they've acted in scenes with me, they trust me. I do tell them when I think things aren't right. I'll stop the scene and say, 'Let's try it this way,' -- without imposing too much, because they have to have their own style. I've tried to work that way from the very beginning of the show, because when we first started, John [McCook] and I were really the people who had had an enormous amount of experience. Ronn (Moss, Ridge) and Katherine (Kelly Lang, Brooke) and Joanna (Johnson, Caroline) -- they'd done a certain amount of stuff, but they really hadn't done a lot. So I kind of tried to protect them for the first couple of years by stopping scenes and saying, 'Let's do this over. Let's try it this way.' Then once they got their feet solidly and they felt comfortable and they started to get real confident, I kind of stepped back from that."
Susan has always enjoyed working with Katherine Kelly Lang. Susan has even publicly expressed her admiration for Katherine and her disappointment that she has never been nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award. Susan explained that for many years, Katherine lacked the confidence to speak up when she wasn't comfortable with dialogue in a particular scene. "I finally said to Katherine, I think it was last year, I said, 'Fifteen years it took for you to finally say, "No. I don't want to say that line,"' said Susan. "She would be busy doing scenes and I'd say, 'Let's cut this.' Then she wouldn't want to say [anything]. She would go like this [makes a gesture with her head, a secret signal that Katherine would make to Susan] and I knew what that meant. I'd tell them to open up the booth [where the director and producers sit] and I'd say, 'You know, I don't think this is working. Why don't we cut this?' So finally, she's come into her own."
Despite the fact that Susan has been directing B&B for many years, she still maintains a great love for acting and this passion for her craft is apparent in her work. Susan's nuanced and complex performances as Stephanie Forrester never cease to astound fans and academy members alike, who have awarded her the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress on three occasions for that role. What is Susan's secret to keeping her performances innovative and truthful? "I had stopped acting for about five years, and I was producing," explained Susan. "When I started back on B&B, I remember after the first week coming home and thinking I'd forgotten how sweet actors are to one another. It's so true. I guess it's that child-like quality that we try to keep in order to do all the 'playing in the sandbox'-type life that you have that you're able to maintain. There's a kind of sweetness in that."