TRAINING GAMES
Has The Biggest Loser's dynamo trainer Jillian Michaels caught the acting bug and gone Hollywood? ''Oh, yeah, right — bright lights," Michaels said from the set of Days of Our Lives, where she taped a guest spot last Friday (March 28). ''I want to walk the red carpet. Oh please! I'm a blue-collar worker.'' Michaels plays a (yep, you guessed it) personal trainer in scenes with Suzanne Rogers (Maggie), Arianne Zuker (Nicole), and Alison Sweeney (Sami). ''I'm training Maggie,'' she describes. ''Then I get into a bit of a fight with Nicole [who's been fighting with Sami] because she acts like a b----. And so I kind of have to put her in her place and tell her to eat something.''
As host of Loser, Days' Sweeney already knew Michaels, who, like her counterpart Bob Harper before her, was completely on board for the cross promotion, which airs April 22. But that didn't rule out a few butterflies in her stomach. ''I'm so uncomfortable I could die,'' she said after rehearsal on the Salem Fitness Club set. ''But luckily Ali is taking very good care of me. I have a little bit of anxiety about it since I keep thinking I'm going to screw up this line and we're going to be here all day. I'm completely out of my comfort zone.''
But did Days do their best to make Michaels as comfortable as possible with a part written to accentuate her, um, high-energy persona? ''I think that Ali actually felt bad for me and tried to make [my character] a little less intense,'' Michaels said. ''And I was like, 'No, no. Go ahead.' Because I have to tell Nicole to eat something and I actually kind of like that line. Because kids across America are like, 'Oh, I have to be so skinny.' So it's nice to be able to say, 'Put some food inside your body.' The whole anorexia thing — not cool. Although the actress who plays Nicole is beautiful, so it's sort of a weird think to say to someone like that, but what are you gonna do?''
LIFE IN THE CAST LANE
Finola Hughes returns to General Hospital on April 25
as super spy Anna Devane, who learns that her HIV positive daughter Robin (Kimberly McCullough) is about to have a baby, making her a — gasp! — grandmother. Hughes left the show last summer, when her character ended an affair with Dr. Noah Drake (Rick Springfield).... Aloma Wright (Scrubs) returns to Days of Our Lives in her recurring role as Nurse Maxine on April 11. ''I find Dr. Kayla Johnson [Mary Beth Evans] in her brother Bo’s room when she should be in her own room, resting,'' says Wright, who first appeared last September. ''And I kind of send her back to her room — sternly.'' ... Noelle Beck, most recently the other-woman Cilla Gray on Cashmere Mafia, has been cast as the new Lily on As the World Turns. She replaces Martha Byrne, who played Lily on and off for 23 years. Beck is no stranger to soapdom, having played Trish on Loving back in the early '90s. She'll make her World Turns debut on May 8.
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