Chad Duell’s Exes Courtney Hope and Kristen Alderson Collab on the ‘Netflix Doc’ Trend
The Young and the Restless star Courtney Hope (Sally) and General Hospital/One Life to Live grad Kristen Alderson (ex-Starr/Kiki, GH; ex-Starr, OLTL) — both of whom were romantically linked to Chad Duell (ex-Michael, GH) — teamed up for their spin on the “preparing for my Netflix documentary” trend that has gone viral on social media in recent weeks.
Courtney Hope and Kristen Alderson Team Up for the ‘Netflix Doc’ Trend
In a video both actresses shared to their Instagram Stories (since expired), Hope and Alderson flanked Bella, the adorable pup that Alderson and Duell had during their relationship. The clip hit all the familiar notes of the tongue-in-cheek trend, which features people framing everyday moments as if they’re about to be interviewed for a dramatic Netflix true-crime documentary, typically accompanied by a serious, ominous score.
Settling into their seats as if bracing for hard-hitting producer questions, Hope and Alderson each held a glass of wine and clinked them together in a “Cheers!” They captioned the moment, “Who’s ready for the Doc?”
Bella has her own connection to both actresses: Duell kept the dog after his October 2015 split from Alderson, and when he and Hope later called it quits in 2021, Hope retained ownership of Bella.
Kristen Alderson and Courtney Hope’s Romantic History With Chad Duell
Alderson and Duell’s romance kicked off in 2012, when they were paired as love interests on GH. Earlier that year, Alderson had settled into Port Charles after the cancellation of OLTL, where, as a 6-year-old, she had begun playing Starr in 1998. “Chad was so insanely welcoming and we just instantly clicked; we were like best friends from the second I started,” she recalled to Soap Opera Digest in 2019.
They made the mutual decision to part ways after Alderson left GH and moved back to the East Coast. “When we ended things, we didn’t end things in a mean way or a nasty way,” she noted to Digest in 2019. “I had been toying with the idea of coming back to Philly for a while and that was really hard on us, and there were just other things in the relationship where we realized maybe we weren’t right for each other, which is obviously such a hard thing to realize when you care about someone so much… We really ended things on a beautiful note.”
Duell subsequently met Hope through his former GH co-star Bryan Craig (ex-Morgan) and they began dating in 2016. By 2019, they were living together. In a joint interview with Digest, Duell said that he considered Hope his best friend, while she shared, “I just feel very thankful that we met each other and feel very lucky that it worked out. I love him with all my heart.”
Hope and Duell got engaged on Valentine’s Day 2021, then tied the knot on October 23 — but they quietly called it quits just a few weeks later. Duell broke his silence about the breakup in 2022 as a guest on State of Mind, the mental health-themed YouTube series hosted by Maurice Benard (Sonny). “It’s a complicated situation,” the actor said. “There was nothing terrible that had happened that somebody did to anybody else…. We’re still on good terms and she’s an amazing person.” He also revealed that despite the ceremony they’d held, “We didn’t actually sign anything; we weren’t really, like, married, really.”
Hope also spoke out about the split in an Instagram post published on the one-year anniversary of her wedding. “One year ago, I was getting ready for what I thought would be one of the biggest dreams come true of my life,” she wrote. “Little did I know it was the beginning of the end.” She went on to describe her time with Duell as “one of the greatest, albeit testing at times, half a decade of my life” and that their love “was built through memories, patience, adventure, lessons, challenges and laughter, a love that did not stand the test of time, and a love that will forever hold a place in my heart because it changed me.”
Alderson is now engaged to actor Taylor Crousore, with whom she shares daughter Kiera, born in January 2024, while Duell and his partner, Luana Lucci, welcomed a son, Dawson, in August 2023.
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