Bold & Beautiful Emmy winner Heather Tom isn’t one

to play favorites — except when it comes to Katie’s storylines.

Her top picks? “Of course, the heart transplant and the

postpartum depression [arcs],” she tells “Brad [Bell, the soap’s headwriter and executive producer] really leaned into them and allowed them to be kind of dark and ugly and to go on longer than a short amount of time.

“He then also allowed it to change Katie and be part of who she is now as a character,” she continues. “It wasn’t just like, ‘OK, this happened, and now she’s fine.’ It’s been an ongoing part of who she is.”

When it comes to challenging material, nothing can top the Katie/Bill/Brooke triangle.

“The heartbreaking part of that storyline was the destruction of the sisters’ relationship,” Tom says. “It was even more heartbreaking than Bill and Katie breaking up.

“I have such a real connection to to Katherine [Kelly Lang],” she adds, “so it was was pleasurably hard.

I was grateful for the great material. But it kinda broke my heart a little bit to see the sisters in that situation.”

Of course it was Katie’s former husband who put them in that situation. “The reason it hurt so badly, for Katie, was the nature of her relationship to Bill.

He’d chosen her, he’d loved her, over every other woman out there, including Brooke, whose shadow she’d always lived in,” Tom notes.

“So to have that fall apart in that way really dredged up a lot of her insecurities about being second best. It’s had a lasting impact on her and on her relationship with Bill.”

To the point that, while Katie was hella jealous of Poppy, she wasn’t willing to reunite with her ex, despite his insistence that he’d changed, and this time he really, really meant it.

“There’s a part of her that will always love Bill,” Tom admits. “He was her first love. He’s the father of her child.

And with Will now back in the picture, it has opened up that part of her brain that’s always wondered about what might have been if she and Bill had stayed together.

“Her decision to stay away from Bill was always one of self-preservation,” she concludes. “Being with him hasn’t always been the greatest thing for her!”