Maitland Ward on Dylan Neal, his supposed soap opera “Seduction”

Maitland Ward admits that as a teenager in the mid-1990s she was “so fascinated” by her “Bold and Beautiful” colleague Dylan Neal, who was seven years her senior.

But the actress, now 45, says Page Six in an exclusive new interview believes that her once sincere obsession with winning Neal’s approval was actually his intention.

“Looking back now, it was such a nursing situation,” she says. “And not necessarily for him to ever have sex with me or anything – but to do things that will guide me and become attached to him and only him.”

Ward explains that she “didn’t see it” at the time.

“I thought it was like,” Oh, he really likes me, he thinks I’m so great. ” He was a very pull-and-push type, he says. “He would lure me in and we did cool things together, and then he would push me away and say,“ What are you doing? Why are you like this?”

The new author details her experiences with 52-year-old Neal in her diary, Rated X: How Porn Liberated Me from Hollywood.

After landing the role of Jessica Forrester in “The Bold and the Beautiful” at the age of 16, Neal, then 24, who played the heartbreaking Dylan Shaw, immediately charmed her with his charisma and beauty. While their heroes embarked on a forbidden romance on camera, Ward reportedly found herself in a more complicated dynamic with Neal behind the scenes.

“It was such a weird relationship and it was my first time in Hollywood. I got the show on my second audition and it was older than me, but it came out as if he just wanted to be the big brother character – but in an inappropriate way that I’m looking back at now, ”Ward says to Page Six.

“And then I didn’t realize it. I always thought there was something strange about me or I was angry. “

A graduate of Boy Meets World – who has found success as an adult film actress in recent years – says Neal “punished me a lot if I ever crossed the line in any way” and “wanted to be a guide.” for me in my career ”.

As seen in Rated X, Neal – who was then dating his current wife Becky Southwell – reportedly went so far as to suggest what Ward should look like when her heroine lost her virginity in a soap opera.

“Dylan took my virginity on the screen … and it was something he talked about – no, rather how he was constantly bragging – and he was proud of it,” he writes in the book.

“Big day,” he said with a smile as I walked onto the set where it happened, “into his dorm room, after a party where we both ran into something we shouldn’t have. He kept commenting on my hair and makeup that I was too exhausted and didn’t look cute or innocent enough. “It’s her first time; you don’t want her to look spinning. “

The makeup artist pulled Ward aside to ask how he was feeling about the potential changes. While the ingenuity appreciated the way her pale lipstick made her feel “feminine,” she agreed to Neal’s concerns and accepted the subdued look of a key scene.

“They changed me to make me feel more comfortable, which made Dylan more comfortable,” he writes.

To Ward’s surprise, her mother and father – faithful Christians in California’s suburb of Long Beach – were at peace with Neal’s growing influence on their daughter’s life.

“My parents felt comfortable with him. He was always respectful and dropped me off on time – although they never required a strict curfew if I was with him, ”he writes. “I was surprised how much they trusted him. My parents rarely trusted anyone, especially boys, with their daughter. ”

Ward’s mother once told her that “[didn’t] she has to worry that “her daughter was” alone in Hollywood “as long as Neal was around.

But mom and dad didn’t know the full extent of the couple’s relationship, says Ward Page Six.

“I think he would be very scolding for anything I do.” [He was a] a person guided by reward and punishment at this time. I wasn’t emotionally ready for it at all, she says.

“I was new to Hollywood and I thought,” Wow, that sexy star of mine, “and was so blown away by this whole fabulous idea for it all. He really played it because I was so young. I don’t know why he didn’t recognize it.

Ward felt “mixed signals” from Neal amidst supposedly intoxicating romantic interactions. She was terribly confused by the hesitation of adoration and rebuke.

“He really got off that I love him, and the more he pulled me in and tempted me, and we did very suggestive things,” he says. “It was definitely not a platonic situation. But then he pushed me away and was very moody with me. So I relied a lot on working on his moods. “

Ward writes in his volume that the wake-up call came during a press interview Neal entered.

“Dylan once took part in an interview I did with one of the soap magazines. He helped me answer all the questions that I thought were cute, but a reporter later said how uncomfortable he felt having to sit under Dylan’s watch while he was giving what should have been my answers, ”he recalls.

“It’s like he thinks he is controlling your mind and your thoughts,” said the reporter, and it shocked me how concerned he was.

Shortly thereafter, Ward realized that Neal was “responsible for my every move,” she writes. “Good or bad, they were his. And I gave him that power to like me more.

The return of Neal’s girlfriend Southwell, who was on an extended educational leave in Japan, made it easier for Ward to distance himself from him.

Ward finally left “The Brave and the Beautiful” in 1996 – the same year that Neal joined Southwell. (A couple who have two children are still married.)

“The show is over and he got married and we never spoke. I remember seeing him … just before I got Boy Meets World. I saw him at the audition and he acted like he didn’t know me, says Page Six. – And I haven’t spoken to him since then.

Ward, who married Los Angeles real estate agent Terry Baxter in 2006, hasn’t contacted Neal since the release of Rated X – but wonders if he might hear from him soon.

“I actually have a lot of questions for him. Especially then, because it would be great. For example, he would go to my school plays and take me places. We went for a motorbike ride together, which was quite romantic, and in the end he pushed me away, making me feel weird, ”he says.

“It was like I wanted to fall into what we were doing, but then I thought,“ Oh my God, he’s rejecting me. He doesn’t like me or anything like that. It was just an interesting situation, I don’t know, I think he just liked how he was a hero to me. “

Neal’s representative did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.

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