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Scott Clifton had no intention of submitting himself for a Daytime Emmy nomination this year. Even though Bold & Beautiful executive producer/headwriter Bradley Bell always encourages his cast to go for the gold, the three-time victor for his work as Liam Spencer was intent on sitting out this go-round.

In fact, Clifton had wanted to forego the gold rush for years after his 2017 Outstanding Lead Actor win. “I know the psychology of it, that you want to give people space” when you’ve been so in their faces, he tells Soaps.com. “And just in terms of game theory, I don’t want to be submitting unless there’s something that I’m really, really, really proud of. But Brad is so sweet, he made me keep submitting, and for four or five years in a row, I didn’t get a nomination. I was like, ‘See?’ So I had kind of thrown my hands up and said, ‘Man, people are sick of me.’”

A Scene Worth Making

Clifton had more than made peace with the fact that he might have participated in his last gold rush. “I have been incredibly fortunate. I got an Emmy in every category, and three is a nice round number,” he notes. “So I was content with that piece of my career being over. You don’t want the Emmys to be the thing that you’re grasping for.”

That being the case, the veteran of General Hospital and One Life to Live was glad that Bold & Beautiful let him take a pass on the nominating process last year. “I was like, ‘This is great. There’s nothing where I feel like I knocked it out of the park, anyway.’”

This year, however, there would be no letting Clifton warm the bench, not after he and fellow nominee Annika Noelle absolutely slayed the brutal scenes in which Liam toys with wife Hope before revealing that he had arrived in Italy just in time to see her game-changing kiss with Thomas Forrester. “It wasn’t even Brad who made me submit,” Clifton says. The show’s indefatigable publicist Eva Basler and associate producer Rachel Herman struck the match to light a fire under his ass. “I told them, ‘I don’t know. I feel like it’s very stagnant, just two characters in the same room for two days. There’s not like a huge arc that happens.’”

Basler and Herman’s response, as Clifton recalls it, was perfect: “They said, ‘Would you shut the [bleep] up and just submit it and see what happens?’” (Remind yourself of just how raw and riveting the scenes were below.)

Between the Lines

Needless to say, Clifton shut the [bleep] up and submitted the scenes. And look what happened: He received his 10th Emmy nomination (and his second for Outstanding Lead Actor). “I was telling my girlfriend today, and I kind of got a little choked up, that this nomination means more to me than even if I [were to be given the award]. It’s been a really hard year on a personal level — that’s like a whole other thing. But I had just come to this belief that people in my life are sick of me. So today, not to sound like Sally Field, but… they’re not. [It felt like being told,] ‘You are still in our community, and we’ve still got your back.’ That really meant a lot to me.”

The 51st Daytime Emmy Awards airs on CBS on Friday, June 7, at 8/7c. Check out the below photo gallery to review 20 of the most memorable Emmy acceptance speeches of all time.