This article may be from Variety, but it is also from Marc Malkin. He's the "events & culture" guy there - aka, the red carpet guy. Back when he was at E! News, he was the "Celebrity Gossip" guy. He hobnobs with celebs (and soap stars lol). I actually don't know who Variety's new "Justin Kroll" is (who left Variety for Deadline like 2 years ago), but Malkin's the guy who would needle celebs about silly questions on the red carpet and post whatever they told him as "scoops." I wouldn't be surprised if his source on this was Fodé himself, honestly. Regardless, with how it's written, it doesn't even mention anything about him being one of the finalists screentesting this week, so it seems like nothing.
For the record though, I'm not remotely against these unknown soap actors getting a shot. Plenty of stars came from the soaps.