Days of Our Lives Leading Lady Calls Co-Star ‘Horrible… Verbally Abusive’ — and ‘I Had to Work With Him Every Day, Often Half Naked’
It’s common knowledge that when Days of Our Lives paired Lisa Rinna’s Billie with Bo recast Robert Keller-Kelly in the early 1990s, the two of them didn’t get along. But no one realized just how awful their working relationship really was until now.
In her new memoir You Better Believe I’m Gonna Talk About It, the actress and former Real Housewife of Beverly Hills alleges that her leading man “made my life a living hell on the set… [He was] horrible to me. I’d go so far as to say verbally abusive. He was passive aggressive, manipulative and played weird mind games.”
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Making matters worse was the fact that Rinna and Keller-Kelly were embroiled in a popular romance on the show. So “I had to work with him every day, often half naked to do love scenes,” she writes. “If I didn’t do what he wanted, he’d give me the silent treatment.”
Back then, Rinna — for whom Days of Our Lives marked her first series-regular role — didn’t stand up for herself. “I still lacked assertiveness and self-confidence when it came to men,” she says. But “if Robert Kelker-Kelly was in my orbit today, he never would have gotten away with his behavior.”
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Eventually, Kelker-Kelly was let go, and Peter Reckell reclaimed his old role. Billie was later recast with Krista Allen (ex-Taylor, Bold & Beautiful) and Julie Pinson (Eve, Port Charles).