Scene And Heard

BUILDING A MYSTERY Alison Sweeney (ex-Sami, DAYS) is hard at work on a new project for Hallmark. “I’m so excited!” she enthuses. “I’m launching a new series of mystery movies with a new character. I know that everybody loved MURDER, SHE BAKED — I loved MURDER, SHE BAKED — it was such a fun movie, but it was really important to me to try something new and different and branch out. Hallmark and I teamed up for a new series called THE CHRONICLE MYSTERIES, and it’s really fun. This is a premise that means a lot to me because I am a big fan of true crime and I listen to a lot of podcasts, so my character is a podcaster who is following a cold case and finds herself in a lot of trouble. I think it’s going to be really exciting for the audience to get on board.” Sweeney, whose first Hallmark film, SECOND CHANCES, aired five years ago, is happy to still be connected to the network. “The very first movie I did with them was with Greg Vaughan [Eric, DAYS], and I was sort of new to the Hallmark family and figuring things out,” she recalls. “And just in a few short years, it’s become such a great relationship for me. I love being a part of the family at Hallmark. All of the movies that they do are so special and so important, and the executives there are so great to work with! It can’t be stressed enough how they champion women in TV and film, and how they really support a very female audience and try to empower women to be the leads and get audiences on board for these strong female characters. I think it’s unique in that way and it’s fun to be a part of!”

TALKING POINTS After a few weeks on the show, Brooks Darnell (Nate, Y&R) is getting to know his new co-stars Kristoff St. John [Neil], Peter Bergman (Jack) and Eric Braeden [Victor]. “Kristoff is like a big brother,” reports the actor. “He always has a quippy comeback. You always learn or hear something different with him. Peter is just invested emotionally into everything. You can tell he’s from the theater. He loves humanity and he loves working. Eric just has a gravity about him; even when he’s talking about sports, you’re hanging on every word. I was just talking to him today and we weren’t in any scenes together. We were just talking about LeBron [James] coming to [the] L.A. [Lakers] and then the World Cup and how Germany was supposed to be in. Even now, talking about him, I want to go and listen more!”

WATCH AND LEARN William deVry (Julian) makes it a point to watch not only his own GH scenes, but those of his co-workers. “I enjoy watching my peers and seeing what their storyline is,” he explains. “I like to have a point of view on the show. My feeling is, if you’re gonna have an opinion about something, you better be educated about it! I’m interested in seeing what’s working, what’s not working, and in being able to tell my castmates, ‘I really liked the moment where you did this.’ We work so hard here, you know? I think it’s nice to be able say something nice about someone’s work because everything is so quick, those moments are fleeting. I like to take a moment to notice and appreciate someone’s hard work and acknowledge it when they do good work. For example, not long ago, when Carly got to Ferncliff and the nurse called her Caroline, I said to Laura Wright [Carly], ‘Oh, my God, you did such a great job with that, with the shift between the confidence of Carly and the insignificance of Caroline.’ I thought the shift in Laura was really great.”

OCEAN’S 3 B&B’s Jacqueline MacInnes Wood (Steffy) recently ran into her boss, Executive Producer/Head Writer Bradley Bell, in a most unlikely place. “I was out paddleboarding in the middle of the ocean a few weeks ago,” recalls the actress. “It was just me and my girlfriend paddling along, and we were pretty far out, and I realized that we were getting near to where we film at the Cliff House [in Malibu]. It’s so beautiful and peaceful out there. We could see dolphins and whales, and then I saw one other person paddle boarding. Now, we were like two-to-three miles out from the shore, and I see a blonde figure and I’m thinking, ‘That person looks familiar,’ and then I was like, ‘Brad [laughs]?!’ Can you believe it? In the middle of the ocean, just us, and I ran into Brad! It was so funny.”