Real Housewives of Beverly Hills personality Lisa Rinna has made a series of harsh claims about a former Days of Our Lives colleague, accusing the actor of being among Hollywood’s most notorious “bullies,” despite having largely stepped away from the public eye in recent years.
The allegations appear in Rinna’s new book, You Better Believe I’m Gonna Talk About It, where she revisits major moments from her career and her time in daytime TV.
Rinna played Billie Reed on Days of Our Lives across a long stretch from 1992 to 2018, sharing many storylines with castmates including Robert Kelker-Kelly (who played Bo Brady) and Kristian Alfonso (who played Hope Brady). Both are referenced in her book.
While Rinna and Kelker-Kelly portrayed an on-screen romance, she claims their off-camera dynamic was the complete opposite, alleging they did not get along behind the scenes and that tensions ran high during production.
Rinna expanded on her claims in an excerpt reported by the Mail Online.
“Remember when Kathy Hilton said I was the biggest bully in Hollywood? Not true. Not even close! I have legit stories about the real bullies in this town. Robert Kelker-Kelly is one of those bullies.
“He made my life a living hell on the set of Days. 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.”
She also alleges that if she didn’t comply with what he wanted during scenes, he would freeze her out on set.
“He was a ticking time bomb. I never knew when I arrived on set each morning if I’d get nice Robert Kelker-Kelly or dark Robert Kelker-Kelly. He was unpredictable and it was exhausting.”
Kelker-Kelly departed the soap in 1995. Rinna suggests that, around that time, the network took extra precautions which included additional protection.
“Suddenly, one day, he disappeared from the Days set. Next thing I knew, Kristian [Alfonso] and I had our own full-time security detail.
“I wasn’t worried about physical harm, but NBC had to cover their a**. We had rent-a-cops parked outside out houses and trailers for three weeks and were driven to and from work.”
After leaving Days of Our Lives, Kelker-Kelly continued acting for a time, later appearing as Stavros Cassadine in multiple episodes of General Hospital.
More recently, his social media indicates he pivoted careers in the early 2000s, training as a pilot and later working as a captain and aircraft manager.