Bell has played Christine ‘Cricket’ Blair since 1983
NEED TO KNOW
- Lauralee Bell opened up to PEOPLE about her The Young and the Restless character, who’s Christine Blair to some and Cricket to others
- Bell joined Y&R, which was created by her parents, in 1983 as teen model Cricket
- Bell’s character and Michael Damien’s Danny Romalotti are engaged in the latest season
A bug is an unconventional nickname, but it’s one Lauralee Bell has been dealing with for over four decades.
Bell, 56, debuted on The Young and the Restless — which was created by her parents William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell — in 1983 as a teen model named Cricket. Over the years, as Cricket went to law school and became a district attorney, she stopped using her entomological nickname, opting for her real name, Christine Blair, instead.
But for Bell, nothing compares to her original moniker. She tells PEOPLE exclusively that she thinks of her long-time character as “only Cricket.”
Bell feels “even more” strongly about using the name Cricket now that the character and Michael Damian’s Danny Romalotti are “finally” getting engaged again. Danny and Cricket’s love story started back in the ‘80s when, as Bell says, Cricket was a “little groupie girl” in love with a rock star.
Bell notes that Danny hasn’t always called the character Cricket, though, that “there was a time” when he called her “Chris” instead. “We were in trouble,” Damian, 63, jokes about that time in the characters’ lives, when Cricket was in a relationship with Doug Davidson’s Paul Williams.
The nickname Cricket also comes with one more perk. “I love that there’s an emoji that’s a cricket because I use it now all the time,” Bell says. “Everyone should have their own emoji.”
Both Bell and Damian are “grateful” their fans have stuck around to see them get engaged again. “I think the nostalgia is really beautiful and that’s what they’re connecting to,” Damian says.
Looking back at the genesis of their on-screen romance in the 1980s, Bell says, “The scenes that we had every day were extremely playful. We were chasing each other around the apartment. We were putting ice down each other’s backs. We were tickling each other. We were playing strip poker. We were doing things that really draw people in because they feel like they’re watching your intimate moments.” Damian calls their early romance “very sweet, very innocent.”
Cricket and Danny married for the first time in 1990, but, thanks in part to the machinations of Danny Romalotti superfan Phyllis (Michelle Stafford), they ended up divorcing.
As for Bell and Damien, Bell thinks their on-screen relationship works in part because they have “very much the same sense of humor.”
“We also are really going to continue putting in as much playfulness as we can moving forward,” Bell says. They also feel comfortable touching each other and playing around in scenes because of their decades of friendship and working together.
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“It’s very comfortable,” Damian says. “It’s so much fun and it just feels very organic when we work together. . . . We know these characters. We’ve known them our whole lives.”
Read the original article on People