We drank three rounds with the women of The Bold Type
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Jessica Chou for EW
"Are you f---ing kidding me?!" Sitting in a Los Angeles bar, Aisha Dee can't believe what she's just heard. Katie Stevens' father has declared Sutton as his favorite character from The Bold Type?!
It's late May and Dee is sitting down at rosé bar Sorry Not Sorry with costars Stevens and Meghann Fahy for their last in-person interview for the beloved Freeform series. They're finishing up their final press day together by drinking three rounds with Entertainment Weekly and discussing The Bold Type's final season when Stevens' dad accidentally interrupts things with a phone call. And when Dee asks him to pick a favorite character, he chooses "Meghann's character."
"To be fair he doesn't even know your character's name, so how much can he really love your character?" Dee says to Fahy once they hang up the phone. They all three laugh and take sips of their drinks, excited to talk about the end of their show, but mostly just excited to hang out. (They're already plotting a sleepover at Stevens' hotel room when the interview is done.)
The stars have become close friends from their time playing inseparable besties Jane, Kat, and Sutton on the series about the three twentysomethings who (mostly) work for Scarlet magazine in New York City. (Think: Cosmo.) For five seasons, they've seen one another through complicated relationships, major career decisions, and the occasional sex club.
But on Wednesday, the series finale will air, and if we know anything, it's that Stevens' dad can't wait to see how Sutton's story plays out. "Why does everyone in my life love Meghann more than me?!" Stevens says with a laugh. EW joins the actors for three cocktails as we toast the end of The Bold Type.
ROUND 1: JENNY FROM THE BLOCK (MEZCAL, CURAÇAO, PINEAPPLE, SPICY)
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What's the story of the first time you all met?
AISHA DEE: Well I was late.
MEGHANN FAHY: [jokingly] So my husband was performing at-
KATIE STEVENS: She's so dumb! I love this joke, it just gets better every day, that Meghann is a part of my marriage. We welcome her. Continue.
FAHY: Everybody loves a third. The true story is that Aisha and I had met at the test, Katie was not there, she already had the job. The first time the three of us were in the same space together was in New York, Katie's then boyfriend, now husband, who I am not married to legally yet, was playing a show in Times Square. He's one of the founding members of Boys Like Girls. Have you heard of them?
STEVENS: [Laughs] She's showing me up with my own husband.
Jessica Chou for EW Meghann Fahy, Katie Stevens, and Aisha Dee
FAHY: It was amazing, they were playing this incredible show it was like the 10th anniversary of their first album and so Aisha had just flown in, she just finished a different TV show, I was living in New York at the time and Katie obviously came in with Paul [DiGiovanni].
STEVENS: I was a groupie on the tour bus and I had come from Boston from their previous show.
FAHY: We went to the show together. We met your parents that same night.
STEVENS: Yeah.
FAHY: And honestly, the rest is sincerely history.
STEVENS: Yeah I think we like flew out the next day to shoot the pilot.
So the friendship was pretty instant?
DEE: [sarcastically] I hated them immediately and it literally has never changed.
Jessica Chou for EW Katie Stevens, Aisha Dee, and Meghann Fahy
What was the first scene you all shot of The Bold Type?
DEE: The first scenes I shot were with Nikohl Boosheri (Adena).
FAHY: That was your first day on set?
DEE: Literally the first day on set we were shooting the scene where we're sitting at a coffee table and there's candles on the table and we're packing sex toys into a suitcase.
FAHY: That was your first day?
DEE: Mm-hmm.
FAHY: I do not remember my first day. Might it have been with Sam [Page]? There was a green juice scene that got cut, was that it? I do not remember my first day on set.
DEE: I just remember mine very vividly because I was literally sitting at a candlelit coffee table packing dildos into a suitcase.
FAHY: How could you forget?
Jessica Chou for EW Aisha Dee from 'The Bold Type'
STEVENS: I don't remember my first scene, but I do vividly remember shooting the scene where it was me and Matt Ward (Alex) when we were on the rooftop and then I go and break into the office and I'm drunk and I call you because Sutton lied to me.
DEE: Wait you look so hot!
FAHY: You looked so hot.
DEE: You were like laying on the thing, what is that, a desk?
STEVENS: The front desk. And it's funny because I don't think anybody really notices, so we shot the pilot in Toronto and then we started shooting the actual series in Montreal. We were in an actual office building for the pilot and then when it cuts to episode two, the configuration of the bullpen is completely different than it was in the pilot.
Was there a moment that you all realized the show worked, where you thought you could be doing this for a couple years?
DEE: I'm very cynical so I was always like, "There's no way this is going anywhere, no one's going to see it, we're getting canceled tomorrow."
FAHY: She actually really did say that all the time. She was like, "It's gonna get canceled. It will get canceled."
Jessica Chou for EW Meghann Fahy from 'The Bold Type'
DEE: But that's just because sometimes you have to protect your heart when you love something. That's what I did. And not to say I'm an expert at it, but I'm very good at keeping people at arm's length.
FAHY: You're getting worse at it though, which I love for you.
DEE: I know!
FAHY: You're starting to really fail at that.
DEE: Like letting people in, can you imagine?
STEVENS: I don't know that I ever had a moment of being like, "This works and we're going to go for a million years." I remember Melora [Hardin] saying, "Oh I'm gonna buy a place in Canada."
FAHY: She was like, "The show, it's gonna run."
STEVENS: She actually did say, verbatim, "It's going to run for like five years."
Jessica Chou for EW Katie Stevens from 'The Bold Type'
Round 2: SORRY NOT SORRY (ROSÉ WINE, TEQUILA, LILLET ROSE, LEMON)
One of the greatest aspects of this show is its cold opens. Do you all have a favorite?
STEVENS: We did one where I remember I had chopped off my hair and I didn't tell Freeform. I chopped off my hair before we started the season, I got in a lot of trouble, and they had to write in my haircut.
FAHY: Can I just tell them though, the way they found out that she cut her hair was she was on Jimmy Kimmel and they were like, "Hold on." [Laughs]
STEVENS: [Laughs] It had been a long time, and we were waiting to find out if we were getting picked up. Anyways, that teaser was where Kat is trying to embarrass Jane to get her to say something and she like gets down in front of the whole lobby and proposes to Jane and everybody thinks that she's actually doing that, so then at the end I say yes and it was not scripted but Aisha got up and kissed me and our kiss was the freeze frame and that was my favorite one.
FAHY: That's a really good one.
DEE: That's probably my favorite too.
FAHY: Honestly one of my favorites is from the first season when we're doing the sex position thing.
DEE: I was gonna say that too!
FAHY: I love that one. And it was like this really sweet moment where when we finished shooting season 5, we were wrapping all of the sets and we went and walked around. They had shut all the lights off and we were walking around the set of the bullpen and we went into that room and we were drinking champagne out of coffee cups, and we redid the sex position thing.
STEVENS: We looked at each other and we were like, "Do you think we remember what that is?"
DEE: And we certainly did.
Jessica Chou for EW Aisha Dee from 'The Bold Type'
You all have had multiple showrunners over the years. Has that helped keep the show fresh?
DEE: Honestly I feel like the heartbeat and the true soul of the show, even though our showrunner works incredibly hard and they're a huge part of making the show what it is, our crew is actually, to me, the constant and the thing that really represents the soul of the show. We've been blessed enough to have a lot of the same crew because we worked in Montreal. For me personally it felt like I was always with the same people so it felt like a constant.
FAHY: We did have a new showrunner all the time and we did have new department heads a lot of the time, so for the crew to be the grounding presence was great but on the flip side of that, I actually think it's really cool that we had so many showrunners because it does make a difference. Every voice that comes in is unique and I think looking back on all of the seasons that we've done, each season has been fused by a brand new energy which is sort of awesome. I think it's great.
STEVENS: Also I think the cool thing is seasons 4 and 5 we had Wendy Straker Hauser and Wendy has been a part of the show since season 1. It was so wonderful to end the show with somebody who's been there since the beginning.
Jessica Chou for EW Katie Stevens from 'The Bold Type'
Because you all have been the constant, have you felt like the protector of your character? Have you ever had to advocate for your character?
STEVENS: I think all three of us have gone through that and I think that's important when you play a character for so long and you feel like you know your character, to be able to have a voice in that and say, "I don't feel like Jane would say this" or "This goes against something that Jane said four episodes ago." I think we're really lucky that we're able to have those kind of collaborative discussions and pre-COVID, we always had a writer on set and that was really helpful to be able to talk to them and workshop things. I look back on those experiences and I think it made me a stronger actor, it made me more creative.
On-screen, Jacqueline (Melora Hardin) is such a wonderful mentor to your characters. Do you all have real-life Jacquelines?
FAHY: Totally. And Melora has certainly been that for us too. She's been such a great presence on the set. It's very important to her that she feels available and I think we all feel like really lucky for that.
DEE: I feel like my life is actually really filled with my own little Jacquelines and obviously Melora is one of them because she's a f---ing bad bitch, she's been doing this for a really long time and has done so many different genres.
Jessica Chou for EW Meghann Fahy from 'The Bold Type'
STEVENS: I'm going to veer off away from the show and be cheesy as hell but say that like I watched the show and was inspired by these women because I've been lucky enough to, I know I sound really lame by saying my mom, but I think my mom is a badass bitch.
FAHY: Your mom is a badass bitch! Your mom is the baddest bitch!
STEVENS: My mom asks for miter saws and power tools for Christmas because she knows how to renovate a home and my mom has, her entire life, just like anything she's decided to do, she does. She doesn't ask for anybody's permission, she doesn't wait for somebody to tell her it's okay to do something, she does it and I've always gotten to watch that. I feel like being a part of a show where people are viewing us as these empowered bold women, it's like I can't take credit for being that without talking about how I was raised by someone so cool.
Round 3: THE GOLDEN PINEAPPLE (THREE RUM PUNCH, FRESH JUICES)
You've had some incredible guest stars over the years. Who has been your personal favorite?
DEE: Raven Simone.
STEVENS: Also Carson Kressley. And the way that Carson became a part of the show was, when we did Celebrity Family Feud, it was against RuPaul's Drag Race and Carson was like, "I could totally be on your show." And our showrunner was there and she was like, "Are you serious because I'll write you into the show." And then she did.
DEE: She follows through.
Jessica Chou for EW Meghann Fahy, Katie Stevens, and Aisha Dee
Let's talk about the end. You all have wrapped. What was the final day of shooting like? Was it what you expected?
DEE: It was really chill, no one had any feelings. [Laughs]
STEVENS: It was very emotional. [Starts to tear up] Oh no!
DEE: Don't! No, because then I'll go there. I won't.
STEVENS: I'm getting sad because this is like our last one. No. [Crying]
DEE: F---!
FAHY: Oh no I'm laughing and crying at the same time!
STEVENS: Yeah, I didn't think this would happen. It was a really emotional day but it was beautiful and exactly what I thought it would be. I was averaging a cry a day for about a week and a half.
DEE: The entire month you were like, she was like, "So you know, this is the last time you're gonna use that prop. You'll never see that prop again."
FAHY: But I also really appreciated you for that.
DEE: I loved it.
STEVENS: I was just kind of like, the day we wrapped Jane's set or the day we wrapped the office I just really wanted us to be able to be intentional with each other.
Were you able to shoot the last scene of the show last?
DEE: No.
Jessica Chou for EW Aisha Dee, Meghann Fahy, and Katie Stevens
STEVENS: The last scene that we shot was us screaming in the street, which was our homage back to the pilot. Personally I didn't have any lines on the last day of shooting and that was my last thing that I did as Jane. But I feel like the thing that felt the most like a final scene was the last scene that we did in the fashion closet because it was just the three of us, it was probably the second-to-last day and it's a very emotional scene. Even though the scene didn't really call for it, we were sobbing filming it.
DEE: I remember I had to make a speech and I read it and it was so sappy, it was about our futures. And as I was saying the speech I was like, "Oh my god I'm looking at these people that have been in my life for like five years." [Starts to tear up]
STEVENS: There it is.
DEE: Shut up. I don't want to do it. But that was actually like, that was a very perfect way to end the whole thing.
STEVENS: I feel like as long as I have them in my life in real life, I'm never actually going to say goodbye. [Starts crying] No!
DEE: [Hugging Stevens] You little f---ing earth angel.
FAHY: Here's what I have to say: I think that this is really the last thing that the three of us are going to do together. This [interview] truly is the last thing that we're going to do just the three of us and so I think it's just really hitting us all. This feels really different. That's why we're all crying.
STEVENS: [to Fahy] Should we be background on Aisha's new movie?
DEE: Can you?
FAHY: Let's show up as extras. I'll be there at the bar. No, [to camera] I don't drink.
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