Beemer, DAYS sweep 11th Annual Soaphunks.net Awards

A clean sweep for Brandon Beemer gave the B&B stud his first win as Best Hunk in the 11th Annual Soaphunks.net Awards, announced live Wednesday.

Beemer won all five categories in which he was nominated. In addition to the top award, he also won trophies for Best Pecs, Best Abs, Best Butt, and Best Eyes. The abs & eyes awards are his fourth consecutive wins in both of those categories.

Hearing about his wins, a wry Beemer told TVGuide Canada's Nelson Branco, "It's extremely flattering. Soap fans are so loyal. I was very impressed with the voter turnout because my competition was, um, stiff. As long as I make people happy, especially in these dark times, I'll continue to take my shirt off while acting my heart out."

Aside from Beemer's wins, everything else went to Sony's soaps, DAYS and Y&R. The well-organized DAYS voting bloc, in particular, managed a first-ever shutout of nominations leader ABC. (ABC voters managed a reverse rout in 2005.)

DAYS claimed the Hunkiest Soap title for the sixth time and saw five of its stars win individual awards: Shawn Christian (Best Hunk Over 40 & Best Arms), Mark Hapka (Hunkiest Newcomer & Best Face), Eric Martsolf (Best Chest), Galen Gering (his fourth Best Hair win) and James Scott (Best Smile & Best Voice).

The wins for Scott and Beemer moved both into a tie for the most Soaphunks.net Awards ever. Each actor has a career 13 wins from 18 nominations.

Voters also ended the staggering droughts of two Y&R hunks this year as Thad Luckinbill & Shemar Moore both won their first awards. Luckinbill's win as Most Shamefully Clothed was his first in 18 nominations (a record). Memo to Y&R: Get Luckinbill naked now! Moore's win as Most Missed Soap Hunk was his first in 13 attempts and was no doubt aided by Darius McCrary's recent casting as Malcolm Winters.

Those wins now move GH's Tyler Christopher into the role of the Soaphunks.net Susan Lucci, as now he holds 12 career nominations but no wins.

Complete voting results can be viewed at the Soaphunks.net Award archive.

Daytime's newest soap hunk: James Franco?!

Well, here's some news I wasn't expecting to be delivering today.

It's been officially announced today that A-list movie star James Franco (Spider-Man, Milk) will be joining GH in a short stint as an unnamed character. Fellow hunk and soon-to-be co-star Steve Burton has confirmed this report. Franco will play a nemesis to Burton's Jason Morgan in a (surprise!) mob storyline.

Could a Hunkiest Newcomer nomination be in order at the upcoming Soaphunks.net Awards? :)

Catch more details at Entertainment Weekly.

Three-peat! James Scott wins Adonis 2009

In a development that probably surprised no one, DAYS stud James Scott was voted as soaphunks.net's Adonis 2009 on Sept. 2, the third straight year voters have accorded him the title of the hottest man on soaps.

Scott's third victory marked his most competitive yet, as he bested runner-up Jake Silbermann of ATWT by a 50.9% to 49.1% margin.

A full breakdown of the 2009 contest results is featured here.

OLTL's Mark Lawson wins Best Hunk

OLTL's Mark Lawson won the 2008 Best Hunk award Thursday night as the 10th Annual Soaphunks.net Award winners were announced, marking the first time in history that a newcomer has won the top award in his freshman year. Of his leading (and record-tying) eight nominations, Lawson also won the awards for Hunkiest Newcomer and Best Chest.

Also winning three trophies was B&B's Brandon Beemer, who won all of his categories except the top one. Beemer took Best Pecs, Best Abs, and Best Eyes, meaning he repeated all of his wins from 2007 while on DAYS. Beemer's wins in 2008 mark the first awards in history for B&B, which finally scored after receiving 28 total nominations.

Lawson and Beemer were the only soap hunks to win more than one trophy in 2008.

OLTL was named the year's Hunkiest Soap, the first time that sudser has won that award after six tries. It was only the second time ever that an ABC soap won Hunkiest Soap, following AMC's win in 2005.

In his first year ever as a nominee, classic soap hunk Shawn Christian of DAYS won for Best Hunk Over 40, meaning that for the first time, a single soap has now produced a winner in every single category of the Soaphunks.net Awards, as DAYS claimed a prize in the only category in which it was lacking a win.

DAYS also took the award for Most Missed Soap Hunk for its alum (and 2003 Best Hunk winner) Eric Winter. Winter has logged appearances on several primetime series this year, and he also won this category last year.

In a somewhat amazing turn of events, DAYS' James Scott, the Best Hunk winner the past two years, only converted one of his three nominations into a win in 2008. Scott easily won again for Best Voice, three-peating in a category that only he has won since its debut in 2006. Scott may have only nabbed one win this year, but one was enough to tie him with AMC's Cameron Mathison for the most Soaphunks.net Award wins ever, with 11 each.

In the narrowest margin of victory in Soaphunks.net Award history, ATWT's Van Hansis won Best Butt by one vote over Y&R's Joshua Morrow (22.73% to 22.59%). Similarly, OLTL's John-Paul Lavoisier eked out a razor-thin win for Best Hair over PAS' three-time champ Galen Gering (28.04% to 27.90%). The win was Lavoisier's first since 2002. Gering's narrow loss also meant that PAS would officially finish its awards run with no new wins, giving it a series total of 96 nominations and 22 wins.

GH scored a trophy for three of its hunks. Two-time Adonis runner-up and 2005 Best Hunk winner Greg Vaughan upset James Scott to win Most Shamefully Clothed for the second time. His co-star Steve Burton flexed his muscles in the Best Arms category with his second career win, following a victory for Best Pecs in 2003. Jason Thompson won Best Smile, an award he previously won in 2006.

Thompson fell in his other category, Best Face, to ATWT's now-fired Dylan Bruce. Bruce's win marks the first time that a CBS actor has won in that category.

Overall, OLTL won a leading five awards, followed by B&B, DAYS, and GH with three each. ATWT won two, while AMC, GL, PAS, and Y&R were shut out.

Among networks, ABC had eight wins, with CBS taking five and NBC three.

And yes, once again, Y&R's Thad Luckinbill went home empty-handed. His two losses leave him with 16 career nominations and no wins.

For the complete race-by-race results this year, visit http://soaphunks.net/awards-year.php?year=2008.

10th Annual Soaphunks.net Award Nominations Announced!

OLTL newcomer Mark Lawson scored a record-tying eight nods Wednesday as the 10th Annual Soaphunks.net Award nominations were unveiled at soaphunks.net. 80 nominations were announced covering 16 categories.

Lawson's eight nominations include the top category, Best Hunk, and tie him with Mark Collier's record-setting number of mentions from 2004.

Also up for Best Hunk and scoring four nominations each were B&B's Brandon Beemer, DAYS' Shawn Christian, OLTL's John-Paul Lavoisier, and PASSIONS' Eric Martsolf, who helped that now-cancelled soap to its final haul of eight total nominations, for a series total of 96 nominations.

Christian's nod marks the first time in awards history that a contender for Best Hunk Over 40 also landed in the overall top category. Beemer, Lavoisier, and Martsolf each have one
previous Best Hunk nomination, though none of them has ever won it. Beemer is the only nominee to have also been in the top category last year.

DAYS' James Scott, who won Best Hunk in 2006 and 2007, in addition to summertime Adonis titles both years, was left out of the race this year, though he did score three other mentions,
including Best Chest and Most Shamefully Clothed. (His relative lack of onscreen shirtlessness in 2008 was to blame.)

A total of 42 soap hunks received nominations this year, five more than in 2006 or 2007. With 20 nominations, OLTL led all shows for the first time in history, helping ABC lead the
networks with 33 nominations. (ABC was in last place in 2007 on that count.) CBS scored 28 nods, and NBC nabbed 11. DirecTV's network The 101, which aired the final season of
PASSIONS after it left NBC, got credit for that show's eight nominations in 2008.

Other points of interest:

• B&B had its best year ever in the nominations, thanks to strong showings by Beemer and newcomer Texas Battle. The show managed seven nominations.


• ATWT's Jon Prescott scored a Hunkiest Newcomer nomination, despite the fact that he has already been released from the sudser. Perhaps even more noteworthy was the strong showing of his former co-star, Dylan Bruce. He has also been let go from the soap, but managed four total nominations, tying him for second place this year.


• The two nominations for Y&R's Thad Luckinbill (Best Hair & Most Shamefully Clothed) extend his unfortunate lead in the no-wins race, with 16 career nominations but no trophies.


• GL crashed and burned this year, scoring a worst-ever single nomination (Murray Bartlett for Best Voice).
  
• Like it or not, the absence of James Scott (and GH's Greg Vaughan) in the Best Hunk category sets up the most unpredictable Best Hunk race in years.

The entire list of nominations can be streamed online, while the text version is also available. Complete year-by-year history of the awards is also available online.

As always, voting begins December 1 at soaphunks.net.

I'll take mine with fries

Here's a cute blast from the past: check out DAYS' James Scott before he was an Adonis, and his hunky former castmate, Marcus Patrick, both getting pulses racing in this classic McDonald's commercial. When they look like this, we're all lovin' it!

Michael Fairman interviews the hunks...and gives us a shout-out

Even though I thought you guys should have beeen checking out Michael Fairman's great soap interview site already, now I really do! :)

In the past couple of weeks, Fairman has debuted interviews with two of daytime's hottest current hunks: two-time Adonis winner James Scott from DAYS and five-time Soaphunks.net Award winner Brandon Beemer of B&B.

In addition to being great reads on regular soap level, Fairman also pumps Beemer for workout info and generally asks all about what it's like being so damned hunky. And in Scott's interview, hear why he hates having his photo taken (sacrilege!) and look for Fairman's shout-out to soaphunks.net...thanks, Michael!

• Michael Fairman's Interview with James Scott
• Michael Fairman's Interview with Brandon Beemer