Jill Whelan recounts a wild story about Charo’s pet bull, Manolo, who once escaped and climbed the stairs in her Beverly Hills home, causing chaos.
Love Boat star Jill Whelan is remembering a hilarious story involving Charo and her pet bull.
In a podcast, Whelan said she and Charo “reconnected” after the long-running sitcom.
She also mentioned Charo’s love of animals — and how a rather large one wound up on her staircase.
Love Boat star Jill Whelan is recounting her “favorite” Charo story.
Whelan, who played Vicki Stubing on the long-running sitcom, recently chatted with Tori Spelling on her misSPELLING podcast.
When the topic came around to Charo, Whelan, 59, noted that the two recently “reconnected” and often get together to have paella at her home.
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“People need to understand she’s all this ‘cuchi-cuchi’ stuff, but she’s one of the brightest people I know,” Whelan said of the Spanish actress, who played a recurring role on The Love Boat.
“She’s the no. 3 classical flamenco guitarist, still to this day, in the world. She practices four hours every day,” Whelan added.
As Whelan noted, while Charo became known for her flamboyant persona and signature “cuchi-cuchi” catchphrase, the Spanish entertainer is multifaceted, and is also an avid animal lover — so much so that she once had a pet bull at her Beverly Hills home.
“So she rescued a little bull named Manolo. That was the bull’s name. Before Manolo Blahnik. … anyway, and she had it in her house in Beverly Hills,” Whelan recalled.
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“So the bull just kept getting bigger. And one day, somebody did not close the bullpen that they built in the backyard, and the slider was open,” she shared. “And she was upstairs singing. And all of a sudden, she hears this, ‘Clip clop, clip clop’ … And she sees the bull starting to come up the stairs because he hears his mama singing. The thing is, bulls can climb stairs, but they can’t go down them.”
“So he’s halfway up the stairs and her husband Kjell — she’s screaming, ‘Kjell, Kjell, come help me with ‘nolo. He’s coming up the stairs,'” she continued, referring to Charo’s late husband, Kjell Rasten, who died by suicide at age 78 in 2019.
“And all of a sudden, he’s pulling on the bull from behind by the tail, and she’s pushing the bull down the stairs to get… well, yeah. So this is her life, like, on the daily. This is how she lives her life,” Whelan said with a laugh.
Whelan recently reunited with Charo and fellow costars Fred Grandy, Bernie Kopell and Ted Lange on Princess’ The Love Boat Celebration, which set sail out of Galveston, Texas, to Mexico on Nov. 16 for a seven-night sailing.
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