Days of our Lives' Chrishell Hartley to lead Lifetime's Staged Killer, penned by soap stars

Days of our Lives actress Chrishell Hartley (Jordan Ridgeway) is the star of the upcoming Lifetime film Staged Killer, written by soap opera alums Lindsay Hartley (ex-Theresa, Passions; ex-Cara Castillo, All My Children; ex-Arianna Hernandez, DAYS) and Jason-Shane Scott (ex-Will Rappaport, One Life to Live; ex-Chad Gibson, The Young and the Restless).

Hot on the heels of the debut of her new Netflix reality series Selling Sunset, Chrishell Hartley (Jordan Ridgeway, Days of our Lives; ex-Amanda Dillon, All My Children; ex-Bethany Bryant, The Young and the Restless) reveals she's got another exciting project in the works.

Hartley took to Instagram to share that she is the star of Lifetime's upcoming thriller Staged Killer. The tense film follows her character, Naomi Spencer, a popular local television morning talk show host whose personal life begins to fall apart when her former co-host from a college show, Jake Everett (Jason Dolley), reappears in her professional life. While the audience reaction to their on-screen pairing causes ratings to skyrocket, behind the scenes, Jake's presence leads to ever more dangerous and deadly scenarios for the people in Naomi's life, as well as Naomi herself.

It's quite exciting that Hartley leads Staged Killer, but she's not the only person who worked on the film that has a history with soap operas: the upcoming Lifetime drama was written by Lindsay Hartley (ex-Theresa, Passions; ex-Cara Castillo, AMC; ex-Arianna Hernandez, DAYS) and Jason-Shane Scott (ex-Will Rappaport, One Life to Live; ex-Chad Gibson, Y&R).

Staged Killer is just one of many films that Hartley and Scott have written together. As fans may recall, the real-life couple also penned the 2017 Lifetime film Deadly Exchange, and Hartley told Soap Central at the time of that film's premiere that the reason they're able to tackle Lifetime films with such ease is their experience with soap operas.

"Doing these Lifetime movies, you sort of realize they're very similar to the soap opera genre. Everything is high stakes and very dramatic," the actress said. "I really believe that being on Passions for so long, having to recreate the same dialogue every day, made me creative. Like, how do I say I love Ethan Crane [Eric Martsolf] for nine years? I literally said I love Ethan and I'm going to marry him the first day, and I said it the entire show. That was my first thing, and I said it all the way to the last day, over 2,000 or however many episodes it was. It was the exact same dialogue, and as an actor, it was, 'How do I make this mean something so that when people are watching it, they believe it?' And I really believe that's how I'm able to write."

Lifetime has yet to release the premiere date for Staged Killer, but fans can check out a sneak peek trailer of the film below.

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