Scene And Heard

STORMS FRONT Mark Lawson (Dustin) credits Kirsten Storms (Maxie) with making his first day at GH a more pleasant one. He explains, “Kirsten and I had met a few times at the Daytime Emmys and also at Broadway Cares [an AIDS fundraiser in New York featuring ABC Daytime talent], and we’ve got some mutual friends. On my first day, she was so awesome in introducing me around to people and just kind of having that hand on the shoulder psychologically for me. And then as I was leaving that first day, she just kind of gave me the thumbs up and said, ‘You really were great today!’ I said, ‘Aw, thanks!’ And she turned around and said, ‘No, you were really great today.’ And then she walked off. And then she did that on the second day, too! I was like, ‘You know what? That’s awesome.’ We all know what that pressure’s like and how scary it can be to start something new. I just really appreciated how supportive and kind she was.”

HANG TIME DAYS alum Nadia Bjorlin (ex-Chloe) has been hanging out with another former Salemite, Molly Burnett (ex-Melanie). “We always saw each other, but we’ve just seen each other more in the last few weeks,” Bjorlin reports. “If she’s off doing QUEEN OF THE SOUTH, she’s in Texas, or if I’m doing something, then we don’t have time to see each other. I feel like lots of friendships are like that, especially if you’re friends with other actors and they’re super-busy working on shows. When they’re not working, it’s like, ‘Hey, do you wanna hang out every day for two weeks while we can?’ She lives practically down the street from me. It’s fun. I like to do ‘Sunday Fundays’ at my house. ‘Sunday Funday’ has a very different meaning these days than it did back in the day, when you would go out to the bars on a Sunday afternoon in West Hollywood. Now, it’s like, ‘Hey, other friends with kids. Do you want to come over to my house and our kids can play together?’ We sit there and watch them. It actually is super-fun. And I do kind of love that my friends like Molly, who are younger, who don’t have kids, enjoy doing that. They like coming over and playing with my kids. It’s just a different dynamic now. And our backyard kind of looks a little bit like a circus, so kids enjoy coming over here. I bribe the children with lots of fun activities in the backyard. It’s a win-win for everyone.”

TRIPLE PLAY  Jason Canela’s (ex-Arturo) favorite Y&R pastime was scaring his co-star, Melissa Ordway (Abby), so it came as no surprise that when the actor recently visited, doing it again was a top priority. “I said to myself, ‘I’m going to scare the crap out of Melissa!’ ” the actor recounts. “The first day I was back at Y&R, I was so into what was happening there that I completely forgot to scare her. I felt like such a fool but I promised myself that the next week, when I came back, I would make it happen.” But Canela’s mission almost slipped his mind again. “I can’t believe that I went through almost the whole day and didn’t scare Melissa. I was so mad at myself but as I was leaving CBS, I saw her walking with Hunter [King, Summer] and Michael [Mealor, Kyle], so I came up behind them and scared the living daylights out of all of them. Security even jumped out of his seat and was ready to defend them.”

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST BH90210’s Shannen Doherty looks back fondly on the impact that the original sudser, BEVERLY HILLS, 90210, had with its issue-driven storylines. It goes without saying that one is particularly close to her heart. “For me, now, and maybe I was too young to understand the full impact that that episode would have — was obviously the breast cancer scare for Brenda,” says Doherty, who has openly talked about her own cancer battle. “It was then impactful but even more so now, because people refer to it quite a bit with my own personal cancer journey. I was proud of it then, but I’m incredibly proud of it now. Again, [it’s] a testament to the show back then, and to all of us and to our writers and our producers, of how willing they were to address issues in a day and age where not a lot of shows were addressing such serious issues, and we were. I always say that it allowed 90210 to be that show that families could sit down and watch, and it opened up the conversation for the parents to have with the kids — and that is something that I think every single one of us can be very proud that we were part of. It was a show that changed things in many ways for TV.”