Art imitated life a bit too well in 1991, when The Young and the Restless’ Eric Braeden and Peter Bergman, who play archenemies Victor and Jack, reportedly came to blows backstage. “Eric and I had a number of problems when I first came here,” Bergman told On-Air On-Soaps decades later, “and they climaxed in an ugly situation.” One that, he hastened to add, they’ve moved past. “We work together just fine.”
Decades after his successful runs as Steven Frame on Another World and Tony Lord on One Life to Live, George Reinholt raised eyebrows by placing a newspaper ad in which he offered to squire women to social events. When the press inferred that he was working as a gigolo, he explained to Entertainment Tonight that, nope, “I’m doing basically what actors do…which is to rent out their talents as performers.”
In 2015, Lisa Rinna shared some bad news with Days of our Lives fans who might wax nostalgic about the 1990s romance of Billie and Bo. “I hated Robert Kelker-Kelly with a passion,” she admitted to BravoTV.com. “He hated me with a passion.” Yet on camera, it somehow worked. “It looked like love and sexual chemistry,” she said. But, “that was some darn good acting right there!”
When the Emmy winner was “killed off” All My Children in 2007 — via poisoned pancakes! — it had less to do with scaring the audience off carbs than punishing her, she told EW.com. “I think it was a dig at me by one of the writers.” Because? She’d made the “fatal” mistake of asking for a scene in which Dixie and Tad mentioned to their kids that it was, you know, not cool that Dad had offed someone. The rest, like Dixie temporarily was, was soap history.
When he turned 47 on November 11, 2019, the alum of General Hospital (as Nikolas) and Days of Our Lives (as Stefan) received the worst present ever: handcuffs. The actor, who in the past has been candid about his struggles with sobriety, was arrested for public intoxication, capping what TMZ called “an alarming bender that possibly went on for weeks.”
After playing The Young and the Restless’ man-eating Jill for more than a decade, the actress responded to being pink-slipped by filing a lawsuit in which she claimed that her former boss, executive producer/headwriter William J. Bell, had gotten her barred from ever again working in showbiz. She also alleged in her memoir, My True Hidden Hollywood Story, that he’d hired “Mafia cartel judges” to ruin her.
When The Young and the Restless handed the fan favorite his walking papers in 2014, TMZ alleged that Adam’s former portrayer had not only bullied and harassed Hunter King (Summer) but repeatedly groped her. “This rumor disgusted me,” he told The Peloton Brief Podcast three years later, adding that really, it had been his ego that did him in. “I was a [bleeping] idiot. I was my own worst enemy.”
In May 2019, an argument between One Life to Live alum Jessica Morris (Jennifer) and married boyfriend Rib Hillis (Jake, Port Charles) became so heated that, according to TMZ, she bit his lip…damn near off his face! Afterwards, he was quoted as saying he “just wants everyone to heal and get on with their lives,” and expressed his gratitude for the support of his wife, Dancing With the Stars pro Elena Grinenko.
In 1997, after longtime Guiding Light leading man Michael Zaslow (Roger) began to exhibit slurred speech — but prior to his diagnosis with Lou Gehrig’s disease — the show yanked him and, however briefly, recast the Emmy winner. Before he succumbed to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis a year later, he returned to One Life to Live, where his deteriorating condition was made a part of his storyline as Dorian’s old flame, David.
Before being cast as All My Children’s Matéo, Mark Consuelos worked as a stripper, wife and former leading lady Kelly Ripa (Hayley) told Vanity Fair in 2012. “A lot of hot guys in Hollywood have done that,” she added. “He started off as a roadie to a group of these guys, and then they talked him into stripping.” And yes, she still had the beefcake pics to prove it. Wouldn’t you?
When the veteran of The Young and the Restless found that she couldn’t get rehired as Drucilla — or cast on sister show The Bold and the Beautiful or picked up by Days of our Lives — she filed a since-ended suit alleging racial discrimination and retaliation for her advocacy for African-Americans at her original soap. “I wish,” she said in 2015, “I could rewrite the horrific behavior that I endured.”
In 2001, All My Children’s Michael Nader (Dimitri) — no stranger to brushes with the law — was arrested in a drug bust at what the New York Times called “an illegal social club in the East Village” of Manhattan. After being collared for allegedly selling a partygoer a $20 bag of coke, Dynasty’s former Dex told the authorities that he felt ill — who wouldn’t at that point? — and was taken to Bellevue for observation. (For more soap-star arrests, click here.)
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