Digest Hails Y&R’s Best (And Worst) Recasts

Jess Walton as Jill, 1987 Before Walton, Jill had been recast with actresses unable to hold a candle to the slinky Brenda Dickson, who transformed the former manicurist into a force to be reckoned with. The in-your-face sexuality that garnered Dickson countless fans seemed impossible to match, but when the actress was axed, Y&R struck gold, finding its future (and now, longest-running) Jill Foster Abbott right across the hall, where she’d been playing reformed prostitute Kelly Harper for three years on CAPITOL. With that series coming to an end, Walton was fortuitously available, and she made her Genoa City debut a few months later. Walton quickly hit every emotion in her character’s complicated and often embattled relationships with her archrival Kay, son Phillip and former stepson/lover Jack. Walton took Jill from sex kitten to hellcat in a way that had the audience rooting for her. That Walton ultimately netted two Daytime Emmy trophies for her work only underscores how right she was for the role.

Peter Bergman as Jack, 1989 With his rakish charm and bad-boy appeal, Terry Lester’s mark on the randy Jack Abbott seemed too indelible to ever imagine the show finding a worthy successor. But when he unexpectedly quit after nearly a decade, Jack was deemed too prominent and important a player to do without, so the show undertook an exhaustive search to replace him. Peter Bergman — who had recently been abruptly fired from his own long daytime gig — was not the most obvious choice, given the good-guy persona he’d established as Cliff Warner on ALL MY CHILDREN. Luckily, an astute Melody Thomas Scott (Nikki) recognized his potential to play against type and suggested him to the powers-that-be; after nailing his audition, the role was his. While his version still possessed a rascally quality, Bergman wasn’t a copycat Jack, bringing a sophistication and maturity to his performance that allowed Jack to graduate from his sophomoric, womanizing ways while still convincing as a formidable thorn in Victor’s side. He, too, rode his success all the way to the Emmy podium, notching three Lead Actor awards.

Sharon Case as Sharon, 1994 It was a bumpy road for Y&R when it first created the role of Nick’s wrong-side-of-the-track love interest, Sharon. In the span of three months, the show hired and fired two different actresses — Sharon No. 1, Monica Potter (who would go on to PARENTHOOD fame) was a tad too refined, while her replacement, Heidi Mark, was too overtly sexy. The third time proved to be a charm when Sharon Case was chosen to succeed them. She had two soap roles under her belt (good girl Dawn on GH and bad girl Debbie on AS THE WORLD TURNS), but the character of Sharon proved to be her sweet spot, with Case capturing exactly the sheltered, wistful-dreamer element that made it so believable that Nick would fall for Sharon so hard and so fast. Not only did Case make the role her own, but as her own confidence as a performer grew, so, too, did the show’s confidence in her, and she’s secured leading-lady status as she’s navigated Sharon through divorce, the loss of a child, institutionalization and every manner of sudsy drama in between.

Michael Mealor as Kyle, 2018 As an adult, Kyle had been played by a parade of actors who, for various reasons, never seemed to stick, leaving him enough of a blank slate that when soap newbie Michael Mealor assumed the part, he had plenty of room to put his stamp on the role. He did just that, bringing depth and heart, but also a playful quality that won fans over almost immediately. Mealor’s easy-going, sensitive take on Kyle proved especially tantalizing to fans when he became the centerpiece of the show’s most talked-about young love triangles in years (Lola/Kyle/Summer), and his realistic and layered on-screen bond with TV dad Bergman also went a long way to establishing him the definitive Kyle. It’s no wonder that months after his final-for-now appearance, Digest is still getting letters calling for his return.

Eden Riegel as Heather, 2010 When Y&R gave actress Vail Bloom the chop after a three-year run, they didn’t just recast Heather — they totally reinvented her. That’s not always a bad thing, but in this case, it was a colossal fail. The show selected Eden Riegel — a beloved, Daytime Emmy-winning fan fave for her run as AMC heroine Bianca — who bore no physical resemblance to blonde, blue-eyed Bloom — but the obviousness of her miscasting extended far beyond this lack of physical resemblance. The role of Heather didn’t allow Riegel to play to any of the strengths that made her such a remarkable Bianca. Where Bianca was forthright, brave and maternal, Heather was more of a vixen, a courtroom cutthroat whose lust led her to make questionable decisions (like sleeping with Chance while he was engaged to Chloe). When she was let go the following year, Riegel herself acknowledged that she’d struggled to embody Heather, saying, “I think that me in that character is not necessarily what you would 100 percent jump to ... Figuring her out was challenging.”