News Brief

HOLLYOAKS' Jake Hendricks: "They were going to hang Keiron!"
Actor Jake Hendricks reveals all about his character Kieron Hobbs' exit from HOLLYOAKS and his whirlwind nine months working on the Channel 4 soap.

"The thing most people are interested in is the death. How do you die?! I was originally going to be hung, but Channel 4 wouldn't accept that. Kieron gets poisoned. He basically discovers everything about Niall's dark past and Niall's left with a choice - either to confess all and make things right, or take Kieron out of the picture. Sadly for Kieron, it's the latter. Maybe it's fitting he has such a dramatic exit, everything else in his life has gone to pot."

INTERVIEW: DAYS star Nadia Bjorlin
"When I came back this time, it was all new management and producers here, and Jay had been gone awhile. WE as people and actors have grown up so much in the meantime. I was not sure how we would come together again, and the first day I was having the best time… dying of laughing. It picked right back up where we left off. I have been very fortunate to have a really great guy to work with."

SARA A. BIBEL: A Premature Report Card For All My Children’s Chuck Pratt
"The show seemed more energetic to me, but if viewers didn’t watch the credits they probably didn’t notice anything had changed. That’s not a bad thing. The only way to save this show is to rebuild it, character by character, storyline by storyline."

PATRICK ERWIN: Rating AS THE WORLD TURNS’ Busy, Busy Summer
"...the last six months or so have shown some very positive trends. We’re seeing a lot more of the people we love acting like the people we love, and interacting with their families."

Salem's New Mayor Plans to Shake Things Up
Starting September 18, Matthew Borlenghi (ex-Brian, ALL MY CHILDREN; ex-Ziggy, B&B) will join DAYS OF OUR LIVES as the Mayor of Salem, where he promises that the new guy will be "shaking things up. I feel comfortable saying that right now, what I've shot so far, is having fairly substantial impact on the Brady family and Commissioner Carver."

EASTENDERS knife murder leads to 134 complaints
Violent scenes in a prewatershed episode of EASTENDERS have once again led to scores of complaints. The BBC received angry responses from 134 viewers after a character was shown being killed on its flagship soap opera this week.

Thursday night's episode saw the death of character Jase Dyer, played by Stephen Lord, as he was set upon by a criminal gang who stabbed him. Scenes afterwards depicted the character's dead body lying in a hospital.

One viewer complained the episode had left his wife "physically sick" while his 13-year-old son was reduced to tears.

Yesterday the BBC defended the scenes claiming that the actual violence was "implied rather than explicit."

INTERVIEW: Y&R's Tammin Sursok
"I am so not a bad girl, in my real life, so I think it’s really cool as an actress to be able to play out so many different things that you can’t really do in a normal day. I would love to do some more catfights. Anything like that would be fantastic!"

Eggelsfield at Über Baby: T-shirts with a hickey on the side
ALL MY CHILDREN star Colin Eggelsfield, a T-shirt entrepreneur, arrived at Über Baby a marked man. Eggelsfield was in the metro to promote Shout Out!, his line of T-shirts with ever-changing message possibilities, at Über Baby in Edina's Galleria. In addition to unique baby-related products, Über Baby specializes in unusual gifts for parents, too.

Eggelsfield said, "Being an out-of-work actor in Los Angeles, you get very creative. I had to come up with something to support my acting habit."

When he was doing a movie in Thailand he saw a T-shirt similar to the product he produces. "I thought it could be done better," he said "and a few years later here we are."

DEGRASSI's a model for new 90210
Despite media hand-wringing over how the new show – with the legacy of Brandon's hair gel and Dylan's sideburns hovering over it like L.A. smog – will live up to its kitschy '90s predecessor, the idea of taking a megasuccessful teen hit and remoulding it for a new generation has already been done.

That show, of course, is DEGRASSI: THE NEXT GENERATION, the award-winning Canadian series that reinvented itself despite naysayers who swore it would die a quick death.

NY POST: Best Male Celebrity Abs
Ex-B&B star Mario Lopez made the cut.

Doherty Says She Didn’t Fight Garth, Calls Tori Spelling A Liar
Eight years have passed since the original BEVERLY HILLS 90210 series finished, but only now we find out the truth about the relationship between Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth.

Doherty decided to finally tell Us Weekly her side of the story which said she and Garth used to fist fight when working on the set of the 90s series. The actress responded to an affirmation made by Tori Spelling in her autobiography.

In her book, “sTORI Telling,” Spelling says that sometimes “there were explosions” between her two colleagues and they once even “got into a fistfight.” She also said that going out with Doherty meant going in clubs and drinking all night. Even though she knew Doherty was a bad influence on her, she still liked her.

But now Doherty is denying everything in Us Weekly’s cover story.

“We never did (fistfight),” Doherty, 37, tells the magazine. “I think I would remember Jennie's fist connecting with a part of my body or a part of my face.”

She then continues by calling Tori Spelling a liar.

“It just goes to show you how people will lie,” she adds.

Sex, love, violence - first Palestinian soap ready to air
Womanhood, domestic violence, sexuality and love are some of the themes dominating a new Palestinian soap opera, set to air next week at the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

"Our main focus was entertainment," said Fareed Majari, the producer of MATABB - Speed bump in Arabic - the name of what is being billed as the first homemade Palestinian soap opera, using local actors, dialect and themes to discuss pressing issues in the society.

"But we also wanted to talk about some of the burning issues which are sometimes swept under the carpet," he added, citing the English EASTENDERS and the German LINDENSTRASSE as his models.

INTERVIEW: Former OLTL/AMC star Forbes March
Forbes March, who recently left ONE LIFE TO LIVE and the role of Nash, stopped by "Stardish Radio" on Wednesday night to talk to fans about his soap roles, Mutant X and what he's been up to this summer.