A historic blizzard pummeling much of the East Coast wasn't enough to prevent me from hopping on a bird from Atlanta to New York City this past weekend. What would make me risk life and frozen limb in such a manner? Why, Jackie Collins of course!

The ultimate queen of sudsy pot boilers released her 29th novel, The Power Trip, on Tuesday and yours truly was asked to co-host a blogger party Monday night at Yotel, with my new homegirl, stylista extraordinaire Lara Eurdolian (above right) of the blog Pretty Connected. READ MORE

Bill O’Reilly always makes for good television opposite Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar on The View. The political commentator returns to the ABC chatfest on Friday. Check out the rest of The View's schedule of guests for the week after the jump!

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On today’s Pop Confidential podcast Jamey Giddens, Luke Kerr, Jillian Bowe and Melodie Aikels dish the latest in pop culture, celebrity, TV, movie and music topics and headlines, including:

Justin Bieber gets caught smoking weed. Bethenny Frankel files for divorce. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West announce the impending arrival of baby. 

Downton Abbey returns to PBS with a new season and Pop Confidential’s Jamey Giddens has Confessions of a ‘Downton’ Newbie. Once Upon a Time, Revenge and The Good Wife return with their winter premieres. The PC crew dish about Gossip Girl’s series finale, before diving into upcoming new series: The Carrie Diaries, Banshee and Cyndi Lauper: Still So Unusual.

Jillian Bowe shares her thoughts on Django Unchained and the controversy that has swirled around it. The PC Gang then make their Golden Globe Outstanding Drama predictions.

Adele’s album 21 was 2012’s bestselling album.

All this and much more on today’s Pop Confidential podcast! 

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No. 15: The Graysons, Revenge

Retribution is a dish best served over the holidays, if you're a member of the Grayson clan on ABC's smash primetime soap Revenge. Blackmail, corporate espionage, insider trading and not-quite-fatal tumbles off balconies could all be on the gourmet menu, but for the chance to break holiday bread with Queen Victoria (Madeleine Stowe), we'd risk it. 

 

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Daytime vet Brian Gaskill recently held an event for a good cause.  This past May, he was named the director of Garden State Players’ (a non-profit theater company in New Jersey) inaugural summer theater camp.  Celebrating his new spoken word poetry album, Make It Real, Gaskill held an intimate reading at Keyport’s luxe Trinty Resturant, a staple of the quaint Bayshore town.  Proceeds from this night of poetry went to help fund the company’s production of  Footloose.  The musical’s profits will then go towards benefitting a local children’s hospital.  
 
I chatted with the Models, Inc., All My Children, Port Charles, Guiding Light, As The World Turns and The Bold and the Beautiful alum before he took the stage to perform the material in front of an audience for the first time. Gaskill shared the details of his new gig, as well as what he thinks about the current state of television, and the fan efforts to resurrect daytime soaps.
 
Daytime Confidential:  How did you become involved with Garden State Players?
 
Brian Gaskill:  Lauren [Raad], who runs it, is somebody I went to high school with.  She was actually a freshman when I was a senior at the performing arts school at Red Bank. I had started posting stuff on Facebook of these pamphlets that I made up in trying to pursue teaching.  ‘Cause I’ve done it at Red Bank Regional, and other places; I’ve had other workshops at places. When she saw this thing in this organized fashion, and I started to put it up there, she said, “Hey why don’t you come back home to New Jersey and teach for the summer?  We want to start a school for the theater company,” and I was just excited about it.  I wasn’t sure I was going to come at first, but then I decided that [I could] continue [to] do what I’m doing, and could pursue my career, but also broaden my life.  In the sense that when I’m waiting for other jobs, I don’t want to be a waiter, who’s you know, it’s okay to do that, but I’m 42 and I have other things to offer the world, and I love working with kids. I just always wanted to make it [teaching] a part of my life.  Even when I just did it—showing up and helping places, being there for kids, especially for high school—it is something that I’ve always been drawn to.  So, it’s just being part of an artistic community, and starting with her company at the ground floor and helping build it up to do more.  Right now they’re doing Footloose, but then in the future to do more original productions, and make it a real theater company, and help be a part of it. 
 
DC:  You grew up around here, right?
 
BG:  I did.  I grew up in Neptune and Ocean Grove, and I was bussed to Red Bank.  READ MORE

 

Celeb-focused cabler E! is jumping into the serialized drama game, by developing a splashy, modern day retelling of the saga of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII. Anne of Hollywood, based on the novel by Carol Wolper, transplants the soap opera of the Tudors from the 1500's to modern day Hollyweird, "the flashiest, most treacherous court of all." READ MORE