NEWS: Freddie Smith, Kelly Ripa, McKenzie Westmore, Leven Rambin, Elizabeth Hendrickson

Freddie Smith shocked Days of our Lives killed off Will Horton
"It was more shocking than anything, and it was the last thing that I thought would happen," the Emmy winner tells AfterBuzz TV of the shocking plot development.

"I was really shocked, and all of a sudden I was coming back. It was just extremely sad. It’s going to be a very sad week on Days, but it's very, very sad, because a lot of people were affected by it as people, as well. So I think that overall, you guys are going to have a very dramatic week of Days. Everyone was very sad about it."

Watch Freddie Smith's complete AfterBuzz TV interview at the bottom of this post.

Kelly Ripa gets a Hollywood Walk of Fame star
The former All My Children star said of the honor: "You have to surround yourself with people that are better than you and that's what I've managed to do in my career."

David Duchovny: "There is a chance I’ll show up on Twin Peaks"
“That’s all I can say. I’ve been frightened into silence,” The X-Files star tells TVLine. Duchovny played transgender DEA agent Denise Bryson in three episodes of the original Twin Peaks series.

The Young and the Restless actress Elizabeth Hendrickson guest stars on NCIS: New Orleans tonight
Hendrickson, who made a return to Y&R on Monday as Chloe, plays a "sexy bridesmaid" named Beth on tonight's NCIS: New Orleans.

CBS cancels Extant
Despite a creative revamp for Season 2, CBS has opted not to order a third season of the Halle Berry sci-fi drama. The network still plans to stay in business with Berry, who will executive produce the drama pilot Legalese.

Victor Garber marries his longtime boyfriend
The Alias alum and Guiding Light alum tied the knot with artist/model Rainer Andreesen in Canada after a 16-year relationship.

Passions alum McKenzie Westmore ties the knot
Westmore (ex-Sheridan, Passions) has married Patrick Tatopoulos at the Chateau Le Dome at Saddlerock Ranch Winery in Malibu, CA on October 11. The duo met during filming of her SyFy reality series, Face Off, where he was a judge during the first two seasons. The actress has a son, Maddox, 9, from a previous union.

Fantasy Island remake in the works at ABC with a female lead
Written by Sheldon Turner, the new take goes further in shaking up the original concept — about a tropical island where people pay to go and live out their fantasies — than the 1998 revival, also on ABC. Gone is the island where both series were set, with Fantasy Island as the name of a company that designs and executes fantasies for clients. In another major change, the enigmatic Fantasy Island owner Mr. Roarke, played by Ricardo Montalban and Malcolm McDowell in the two previous versions, will be a woman. The new Fantasy Island centers on a brilliant, dynamic and sexy woman who runs a San Francisco-based company that provides clients with his or her most intimate, dark or outlandish fantasy. Like the original series, each episode is expected to chronicle two fantasies, with an overarching serialized arc involving Roarke and her personal life.

All My Children alum Leven Rambin gets married
Rambin (ex-Lily, AMC) married actor Jim Parrack on Saturday in Buda, TX. The couple got engaged last August, 2014.

Fear the Walking Dead wraps season as the biggest freshman in cable history
The AMC series, which averaged 11.2 million viewers, will get a weekly Talking Dead companion when it returns.

NEWS: GENERAL HOSPITAL Pen-Pal Murder; Lupita Nyong'o's Soap Opera Past; TV vs. Online Video Stats; L.A. LAW Season 1 Out on DVD; Ryan McPartlin; Leven Rambin

Soap-opera pen-pal network may have led accused killer to L.A.
A New York parolee accused of fatally strangling a retired teacher in Hollywood may have come west after developing a network of pen pals, some that apparently grew from a shared fondness for GENERAL HOSPITAL. Three months after he was released from prison after serving 20 years for murder, Scott Kratlian showed up in Hollywood and allegedly strangled one of his pen pals, 82-year-old Harry Major.

The relationship between the convicted killer and the retired Hollywood High School teacher was probably one of many the inmate fostered over the years while imprisoned at Marcy Correctional Facility outside Syracuse, said another of Kratlian's pen pals. Kratlian was part of a GENERAL HOSPITAL fan club whose enthusiasts wrote to one another, Jason Ward said in an interview.

You Won't Believe How Big TV Still Is: Staggering viewership numbers and dominant revenue figures
A new study from Nielsen, conducted with ad targeting firm Simulmedia, contains plenty of insights, but among the most striking is the size of either industry. Nielsen rarely pulls back the veil on exactly how big the TV and video worlds are (they do mint the currency in the former, after all), but here it is in black and white: There are 283 million television viewers monthly (the population of the United States is 313 million), each watching an average of 146 hours of TV.

Compare that with 155 million online video viewers averaging just shy of six hours monthly on mobile and almost six and a half hours over the Web. So while TV’s audience is still almost twice that of digital video, the amount of money in digital isn’t even 5 percent of the mammoth $74 billion chunk of change in television. What’s going to bring about growth in the former, said Amit Seth, Nielsen’s evp, global media products, is equivalency.

NEWS ROUNDUP: Alicia Minshew Open To Staying With AMC, Alison Sweeney On New DAYS, Sue Sylvester's Opponent Revealed!

AMC's Alicia Minshew Not Moving On Just Yet
"Nothing has been worked out with me yet; we're trying to figure things out and figure out what is going to work out best for me given that at some point, I have to return to the East Coast."

DAYS star Alison Sweeney on the state of soaps
"I think our competition has changed a lot over the years; it's not the three other soaps, it's all of primetime TV. I think a lot of primetime TV have embraced their inner soap, with serialized stories that have a real soap energy and feel to them. And reality shows have done that, too. A lot of reality shows are that kind of escapism, naughty TV that no one admits to watching. Fans are getting that kind of fix from any number of new areas.