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HUNTER STAR AXED!

Former football star Fred Dryer was a team player until he held out for a pay rise

Big bad Fred Dryer – once a feared defensive player for the Los Angeles Rams – no longer has a hefty pay cheque to lug home every week.

Dryer has been sacked from Hunter – now screening on the Seven Network – after skipping work and holding out for a more than 100 per cent salary increase – from $21,175 to $50,000 per episode.

But Dryer, 40, is no Don Johnson.  (The Miami Vice star had his weekly pay doubled recently after making a similar fuss.)

Hunter’s producers refused to meet Dryer’s demands and hit him with a $20 million dollar breach of contract lawsuit, which has gone to the Los Angeles Superior Court.

The producers dropped Dryer in favor of strapping Joe Cortese, 36, who will join the show as either Hunter’s half-brother or cousin from New York.

There is, however, still a possibility that Dryer will continue in the role of Rick Hunter – if the series’ producers can get him back on their terms.

 

“This is something of a ploy on their part, and Joe Cortese knows that,” says a source on the Hunter set.  “But he’s also a very good professional actor who will get paid under his contract no matter what happens.”

Cortese has been acting for 15 years.  He has appeared in the TV movie The Brothers-in-Law and the feature film Monsignor, opposite Christopher Reeve.

He will get $30,000 a week for the series – almost 50 per cent more than Dryer.

The series’ writers have to come up quickly with a means of dropping Dryer and bringing in Cortese.

According to the Hunter source, the most likely scenario finds the new Cortese character arriving from New York and working on a case Los Angeles.

Dee Dee McCall (Stepfanie Kramer) either runs into Cortese or calls him to help her on a case because she can’t reach Hunter.

Together, they go to Hunter’s apartment and find it splattered with blood with no Rick in sight.  While trying to learn happened, they find out they work well together.  They probably won’t find a dead Hunter, though, so the door is left open for Dryer to return to the show.

 

 

Stepfanie and Joe have met and talked and they’re both excited about working with the other, although Fred Dryer was very popular on the set and got along with everyone,” says the source.

“There will be more humor between their two characters than there was with Dee Dee and Rick.  There will be more funny situations that pit his New Yorkish background against her relaxed California lifestyle.”

Dryer has always gone his own way, as he explained in an interview last year.  “My father wouldn’t be clear with me.  He was always telling me what to do,” he said.

“I didn’t like it from him.  I didn’t like from coaches or owners and I don’t like it from anyone now.”

Not that Dryer has been an anarchist on the set before – although some people may have expected it.

As Hunter creator and co-executive producer Frank Lupo said: “Fred’s reputation was all over the place coming in.  There were nervous chuckles and ‘Boy, what are we going to run into with this guy?’

“But in starting a new series where you don’t get needed rehearsal time, the scripts are late, and the brunt falls on the principal actors, Fred’s been a team player all the way.”

Until now, that is.

 

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