Patrick Duffy and Linda Purl are setting a new standard when it comes to romance on and off set.
The power couple got candid in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail about their relationship while promoting their upcoming film Hollywood Grit.
The feature isn’t the first time the veteran actors and romantic partners of five years have worked together.
Linda, 69, fondly recalled an early sexy moment from set when she realized mixing work and pleasure was going to work out.
She told the Daily Mail: ‘It was pretty odd the first time we were working together. We finished a scene and I felt a pat on my derriere… on set! Then I hear ‘Nice job honey.’
‘I was like huh? Oh! Ok!’
Patrick, 76, then blushing and giggling chimed in to his defense, ‘It’s legal!,’ which led to blushing and giggling from the couple.
Patrick Duffy and Linda Purl are setting a new standard when it comes to romance on and off set as they got candid with Daily Mail about their relationship; they are seen in June 2023
The two had worked together on soap opera The Bold And The Beautiful over seven episodes from 2022 to 2023 as Patrick has starred on and off on the program since 2006.
Their contagious chemistry continued as they gushed about their love life at work and at home.
Patrick, practically in poetic terms, describes their life together: ‘It sounds so cliché, but our life is very romantic, everything that we do has that overtone. It’s an I-love-you-relationship.
‘So if she’s working and I’m not there, yes, I send flowers to the dressing room. If we’re working together, I guess it’s arrogance, but I consider each of us our own flowers for each other.’
Their love story which reads much like the script for a pandemic-era romcom began 40 years after they first met, and developed through hours of nightly phone calls and Zoom chats.
Linda said: ‘We were finding lots of common threads. Patrick would read a poem that he wrote and then we’d listen to some music. And so it just started to deepen.’
All culminating in Patrick making a 20 hour drive for the real-life, in-person first kiss which Linda describes as courageous: ‘Patrick was very courageous to get on his white horse…his little blue Prius, and drive [to me] took courage.’
Patrick continued: ‘To step out of the car and it’s just the two of us in a driveway staring at each other. It was like, okay, now what? And I very meekly said, may I kiss you? And then that was it. The deal was sealed.’
Linda, 69, fondly recalled an early sexy moment from set when she realized mixing work and pleasure was going to work out as she told Daily Mail: ‘It was pretty odd the first time we were working together. We finished a scene and I felt a pat on my derriere… on set! Then I hear ‘Nice job honey.’ I was like huh? Oh! Ok!’
The two had worked together on soap opera The Bold And The Beautiful over seven episodes from 2022 to 2023 as Patrick has starred on and off on the program since 2006
Purl is seen with Henry Winkler on Happy Days in 1982
Duffy is seen on Dallas in 1986
Duffy heeds an unexpected warning to others out there wishing they could have a love like this but not actively looking for it: ‘If they have resigned themselves to being that single person that they think they’re going to be the rest of their lives, they pretty much may end up being a singular person the rest of their lives.’
For Linda and Patrick the secret to finding love later in life was being open.
Duffy explains that despite being single in his 70’s, before meeting Linda he was ‘Open to new ideas, new people, everything. And when she came into my orbit, it was a different feeling.
‘I realized that just being comfortable wasn’t enough. Just being satisfied was not enough. That there was a happiness factor that I wasn’t experiencing that I got every night on a two-hour Zoom. And it had to be fleshed out.’
Now that they’ve found this great love, perhaps it would be tempting as two rare Hollywood success stories, forever a part of television history with iconic shows like Dallas, Happy Days, Step by Step, Matlock, to leave it all behind? But when asked about retirement it was clear the thought was completely out of the question.
‘We don’t consider retiring, but what we are are realists. We don’t work with the consistency that we did for the first 50 years of our career. And that’s okay. We get these moments.. Hollywood Grit come along… and it is an absolute treasure,’ Duffy explains.
Their chemistry is just as captivating on screen in the new Hollywood Grit as Hollywood jazz club owners Eleanor and Clarence Rhodes. Duffy shares: ‘Linda and I would go home each night just thinking, this is the most fun ever.’
Purl added: ‘For me, to see Patrick in a gold spandex Speedo…how could I say no?’
The two stars have been promoting their upcoming film Hollywood Grit as Duffy is seen in the project with Nikki Howard
Purl is seen in the film directed and written by Ryan Curtis
Hollywood Grit is out in select AMC theaters nationwide August 22
But actually, for a man that is known for being a hunky tv heartthrob, Duffy is relieved to put his shirtless days behind him: ‘That’s the other beauty of the type of work we do nowadays, I’m paid not to take my shirt off now, which is great!’
All jokes aside he adds sincerely about their work in Hollywood Grit: ‘It’s different than anything we’ve ever done before and characters that we’ve done before. I get to watch Linda work which is a tutorial in our profession in and of itself.’
Duffy continues, ‘To be able to do the kind of characters that you saw other people do and that you thought, oh, that’ll be fun someday. And I’m in my someday now.’
Hollywood Grit is out in select AMC theaters nationwide August 22.
