Dark Secrets Of The Dynasty Cast

Following the monumental success of CBS's "Dallas," ABC got in on the shoulder-padded, catfighting, oil baron action themselves when they launched "Dynasty" at the start of 1981. Within four years, the show had overtaken its prime-time rival in the ratings to become America's most-watched show, while in 1984 it also triumphed in the Best Television Series — Drama category at the Golden Globes.

As it turns out, many of its major players, including Linda Evans, Joan Collins, and Heather Locklear, led the same kind of messy personal lives as their characters. Indeed, the classic soap opera, which eventually wrapped up in 1989 before returning for a two-part miniseries two years later, was barely out of the tabloids during its prime, and not necessarily always for the best reasons. From cult concerns and extramarital affairs to legal troubles and difficult family matters, here's a look at 14 stars who hid dark secrets. 

Linda Evans became a soap opera legend thanks to her portrayal of Krystle Carrington, the other half of oil magnate Blake and, most notably, the arch nemesis of his former wife Alexis. But the actor soon realized prime-time fame wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and while searching for the true meaning of life, she came across the teachings of J.Z. Knight, a spiritual guru who claimed to be the voice of an ancient warrior known as Ramtha.

"It was such a profound book because I was experiencing the height of 'Dynasty' but I realized there was something I wanted to know," Evans explained to The Olympian about her first introduction. In fact, the star became so enamored with Knight's philosophies that she moved to Washington just to be closer to Ramtha's School of Enlightenment.

But according to various reports, Knight isn't exactly the most enlightened figure herself. She's been accused of expressing racist, antisemitic, and homophobic views while channeling the 35,000-year-old Ramtha. She was sued by her former husband, Jeff Knight, after persuading him not to seek treatment for a HIV diagnosis, which later resulted in his death. And the school, which has also attracted the likes of Shirley MacLaine and Salma Hayek, is viewed by many as a dangerous cult.

Alexis Colby walked down the aisle on four separate occasions as the resident superb***h in prime-time soap "Dynasty." And by the end of her nearly 10-year run as the shoulder-padded villain, the actor who played her had also equaled this remarkable tally. Yes, Joan Collins became renowned just as much for her eventful love life as her catfighting skills. And this includes an affair with a married man.

"It was utter hell," the British national treasure told The Guardian in 2023 about the time she spent with George Englund, a director who was wed to fellow actor Cloris Leachman at the time. "Yes, I would never do it again." Collins still had plenty of nice things to say about her former beau when explaining why she was attracted to him in the first place. "He was very handsome, very urbane, incredibly witty. Fascinating. And eight years older than me." However, she also admitted she found it hard to continually keep up with all the deception.

Leachman also addressed the affair, which took place back in the 1950s, in her memoir "Cloris: The Autobiography," recalling how Collins had once phoned her in the middle of the night to reveal all. The former, who admitted to several extramarital dalliances herself, decided to stay with Englund for another 20-odd years before the couple finally split in 1978.

James Farentino appeared in the early years of "Dynasty" as Nick Toscanni, a doctor who goes after Blake Carrington in a bid to avenge the death of his brother, resorting to everything from bedding his daughter to abducting his grandson. And more than a decade later, the actor made headlines for targeting a member of Hollywood royalty in a similarly nefarious fashion.

Indeed, in 1994, Farentino was charged with stalking the youngest daughter of Rat Pack legend Frank Sinatra, and after pleading no contest to one such misdemeanor, was given a 36-month probation sentence and an order to attend Alcoholics Anonymous and psychiatric counseling sessions. Furthermore, the former soap opera star was told he had to keep a distance of at least 800 yards from Tina Sinatra, who he'd previously dated on and off for five years.

Farentino had already ignored a similar restraining order, bombarding Tina with multiple faxes and phone calls following their split. "I'm somewhat relieved," remarked the latter (via UPI) after leaving the court hearing that she'd attended with her sister Nancy. "... I wish him well."

The oft-tragic Heather Locklear got her big break in 1981 when she was cast as Krystle's niece Sammy Jo in the second season of "Dynasty," going on to inhabit the role throughout a decade in which she became one of America's favorite pin-ups. However, from her marriages to Tommy Lee and Richie Sambora to numerous legal problems, her own private life soon became even more turbulent than her character's.

In 2008, Locklear was arrested on a DUI after being spotted driving haphazardly by the California Highway Patrol, later receiving a three-year informal probation sentence after the charge was downgraded to reckless driving. Then 10 years later, the actor got herself in trouble with the law again on two separate occasions.

Firstly, Locklear was arrested following an incident of domestic violence at her Thousand Oaks home, a situation she made significantly worse when she also lashed out at an officer, earning her three counts of battery against a deputy. Then just four months on, the troubled star was arrested on several battery counts which she pleaded no contest to and ordered to attend a mental health residential facility for 30 days.

Helmut Berger had been a European cinema mainstay throughout the 1960s and 1970s, even picking up a Golden Globe nomination for his turn in 1967 historical drama "The Damned." So it was something of a surprise when the Austrian agreed to play a drug-addicted racehorse-owning tycoon Peter DeVilbis in prime-time soap opera "Dynasty."

However, there was at least one aspect of the character Berger could relate to. Indeed, renowned for living on the wilder side of life, the actor struggled with substance abuse issues throughout much of his life. According to The Guardian, his drug of choice was cocaine, which, in a blatant sign of his excessive ways, he'd cut up using a golden razor and snort via a Bulgari-made gold straw attached to his neck chain.

The bisexual Berger, who died at age 78 in 2023, also very nearly succumbed to a fatal overdose in the late 1970s following the passing of his long-time mentor and lover Luchino Visconti. But he was more than happy to recount such tales in 1998 memoir "Me." After his passing, his agent remembered Berger declaring (via The Local At), "I have lived three lives. And in four languages! I regret nothing!"

Berger certainly wasn't the only "Dynasty" star to have problems with drugs and alcohol. Take Michael Nader, for example, who played Alexis' third husband Dex Dexter for six years on the hit soap. During his early years on the show, the actor confessed to TV Guide he'd started taking hallucinogenics as a teen. 

In 1997, Nader was charged with a DUI and fighting with the Long Island police force after being busted while driving his teenage daughter Lindsay. And then in 2001, the star got himself in further trouble when he was caught attempting to sell cocaine to an undercover policeman.

"He was very distraught," one of the arresting officers told New York Post about Nader's state of mind at the time. "He told us that his mother had just passed away." The actor, who also received hospital treatment for reasons unknown following the arrest, was one of five clubbers caught in a raid at the East Village nightclub Barber Shop. "It's not ritzy," the officer said. "We keep busting it over and over again, but it keeps opening up." The actor passed away in 2021. Here's a look at several other stars from Dynasty you might not know died. 

Having fronted groundbreaking sitcom "Julia," Diahann Carroll's pioneering career continued when she was cast as Blake Carrington's long-lost half-sibling Dominique Deveraux in the fourth season of "Dynasty." "I want to be the first Black b***h on television," she remarked (via Vogue) about her intentions to give Alexis Colby a run for her money.

Carroll's own life certainly wasn't short of drama, either. In 1959, she entered into a relationship with the oft-tragic Sidney Poitier, who'd later become the first African American to pick up the Best Actor Oscar. The only problem is both parties were married at the time, the former to Juanita Hardy and the latter to Monte Kay. But the couple, who met while starring in "Porgy and Bess," still hid their affair in plain sight.

Indeed, not only did they go on to share the screen again in 1961's "Paris Blues," they also happily posed for pictures together at Poitier's Academy Awards triumph three years later. In her 2008 autobiography, Carroll alleged her lover had vowed to get a divorce so they could both ride off into the sunset. But when she split from her husband, Poitier got cold feet and took another two years to make the move. Even then, things didn't run smoothly, and after each jumped into bed with other people, they decided to call it a day in acrimonious circumstances. However, they later patched up their differences and remained firm friends.

In 1984, Billy Dee Williams added prime-time soap opera to his impressive resume by playing Dominique's music manager second husband Brady Lloyd in "Dynasty." One thing he'd want scrubbed from his record, however, is the incident 12 years later which resulted him in facing a charge of spousal battery.

The trouble started when Los Angeles police were alerted to an altercation that occurred as Williams and his girlfriend were traveling home from a meal out and apparently left the latter scratched and bruised. The unidentified victim later insisted she was responsible and the misdemeanor charges, including dissuading a witness, were dropped. But the actor was still ordered to undergo a year-long course of therapy.

In an interview with Rolling Stone several decades later, Williams insisted he was entirely innocent and that he didn't appreciate a joke Chris Rock made about the situation at the time: "I've never slapped a woman. I've never abused women ... I heard about his comments, and I have always wanted to — but decided not to — address that with him."

Catherine Oxenberg was the first, and most memorable, of two actors to inhabit the role of Alexis' daughter Amanda Carrington in the mid-1980s era of "Dynasty." But in recent years, she's become more renowned for introducing her daughter to a dangerous cult.

Indeed, in the early 2010s, the actor and India Oxenberg attended what she presumed to be a self-help program held by an organization named NXIVM. Of course, as anyone who's watched the numerous TV exposes about leader and co-founder Keith Raniere will already know, these classes were essentially a gateway to mind control. And at the two-year point that Catherine decided to leave, her offspring had become fully indoctrinated.

The soap opera favorite spent much of the decade attempting to get India out of the cult, now infamous for its branding and sexual grooming of its female disciples. "And I did my darnedest to try to get her involved in other things, to try and redirect her interests, to try and get her other jobs," Catherine explained to NBC News while admitting she felt horrendous guilt. "But nothing worked. I couldn't believe the hold that they had over her." Thankfully, the younger Oxenberg eventually saw the light and left in 2018, the same year Raniere was arrested.

Ali MacGraw has never been an actor to hold back. She admitted she took the part of Lady Ashley Mitchell, the photographer who loses her life in the Moldavian Massacre, in "Dynasty" purely for the cash. And she's often candidly discussed the addictions to both alcohol and sex, for which she sought treatment at the Betty Ford Center.

"Being in love was my real drug of choice," MacGraw told the Los Angeles Times in 1993 at a conference dubbed Recovery Day for Women before addressing her battle with the demon drink. "I'm still a working actress just like I always was. But I'm also a recovering alcoholic, so I feel it's somewhat of a responsibility to be honest. It's not breast-beating tragedy, it's just one of many facts of my life."

As you'd expect, MacGraw, whose romantic history includes Steve McQueen, Robert Evans, and Warren Beatty, was also forthcoming in her memoir "Moving Pictures." "Prizes and lovers, tequila and chocolate," she wrote (via Vanity Fair). "Attention and work. I needed them all to keep me from the edge of the deep black hole inside me."

Shortly after auditioning to play his 007 namesake, James Healey gatecrashed another glitzy fictional world when he was cast as Sean Rowan, a character who'd later become Alexis' fourth husband before receiving a fatal blow during season eight finale fight in "Dynasty."

Five years later, Healey got into a very real skirmish, but on this occasion he was the one who inflicted the damage. Yes, the actor was alleged to have broken into the Rosemead home of his sibling's estranged other half and used a shard of glass to cut his throat.

Healey subsequently spent 91 days in prison while awaiting his Pasadena Superior Court trial. But remarkably, this was the only jail time he served. Indeed, although he was found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, the star was only ordered to serve probation for three years and 200 hours' community service.

The legendary Rock Hudson's final screen role was in "Dynasty" as Krystle Carrington's horse breeder love interest and Sammy Jo's biological dad Daniel Reece. The actor had to be killed off screen when the AIDS-related illness, which eventually took his life, left him too ill to work.

Soon after, the industry open secret that the former matinee idol was gay started to become public knowledge. But Hudson would have been outed several decades previously if his manager hadn't thrown another closeted star under the bus. Indeed, keen to preserve the heterosexual image of his star client, Henry Willson struck a deal with Confidential magazine that if they reneged on their plans to disclose Hudson's sexuality, he'd allow them to print gossip about another of his proteges, Tab Hunter.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2015, Hunter, who died seven years later, explained, "Specifically, he made them aware of the fact that five years earlier, before I was anybody, I had been arrested for disorderly conduct when police raided a party at which I — and a number of other gay people — were in attendance. Confidential then ran the story on its cover and described it as 'a pajama party,' insinuating that it had been some sort of gay orgy."

It doesn't appear that there was any love lost between John Forsythe and his "Dynasty" co-star Joan Collins. "I didn't like him because he was a misogynist p***k," the latter stated about the former during a candid 2021 chat on "Piers Morgan's Life Stories" (via The Independent).

The British national treasure explained that Forsythe, who played Alexis' oil magnate former hubby Blake Carrington, believed he was the true star of the show and demanded a salary to reflect that. "[He] had it in his contract that he always had to have $5,000 an episode more than anybody else in the cast, and that in any publicity that went out about the show, he always had to be front and center."

Even when Collins, whose arrival in the second season is widely credited with turning the show into a phenomenon, got a pay rise, Forsythe's bumper contract still came into play: "It came with a caveat that they'd only put me in half the episodes as they couldn't afford to pay me."

Like Hudson, Barbara Stanwyck was another Hollywood veteran whose character in "Dynasty" proved to be her last, although she did go on to portray Constance Colby Patterson in its spin-off "The Colbys," too. The actor didn't get to share her long-term success, however, with her only son.

Indeed, left infertile through a backstreet abortion while working as a chorus girl, Stanwyck adopted a 10-month-old boy named Dion Anthony in 1932 with then-husband Frank Fay. But she never intended to be a mother, and throughout most of his childhood, the youngster was palmed off to nannies or boarding school. He'd later claim that the only time he was shown affection was when the pair were posing for the media.

Dion repeatedly tried to rebuild a relationship as an adult, but describing him as an "unfortunate situation," Stanwyck repeatedly refused his requests for a reunion. Fellow actor Joan Crawford once remarked (via Express), "She was not meant to be a mother. When he joined the army she shook the kid's hand and that was it. I don't think she ever saw him again."