Put on your seat belts, because we’re about to take a journey into the hallowed history of The Young and the Restless. With the popular daytime soap set to premiere a number of crossover episodes with spinoff series Bold and the Beautiful starting on October 25, we decided to highlight the importance of why the much-talked Forrester fashion show could pale in comparison to the potential reunion of Lauren Fenmore Baldwin (Tracey E. Bergman) and Shelia Carter (Kimberlin Brown).
Despite the two ladies being on different soaps and in different cities these days, they share a long and sordid past full of lies, kidnappings and pure chaos that shouldn’t be ignored. So let’s dive into it all.
Picture it, it’s the 90s, and Lauren is coming into her own as a young woman in Genoa City and is married to Dr. Scott Grainger (Peter Barton). Unfortunately for her, a young nurse named Sheila became obsessed with Scott, even drugging him before sleeping with him, a move that resulted in Sheila becoming pregnant.
Coincidentally, Lauren was also carrying Scott’s child at the same time. Sheila wound up miscarrying, but she pretended to still be pregnant. She then later carried out a scheme where she bought a baby from the black market, swapped the child with Lauren’s infant son and claimed Lauren’s baby as her own. The infant Sheila purchased later died of meningitis, leaving Lauren to be a grieving mother.
The truth eventually came out. When Lauren set to reclaim her son, now known as Scotty, Sheila tried to kill her. When the deranged show villain failed, she fled to Los Angeles and got involved in a romance with Eric Forrester (John McCook).
Sheila eventually returned to Genoa City in 2005, and began another reign of terror directed at Lauren. It was revealed that Sheila had been keeping tabs on Scotty, who was by now an adult. If the stalking wasn’t bad enough, Sheila worked with her former flame, Tom Fisher (Roscoe Born), to poison Lauren. The goal was to get Lauren’s mind foggy enough from the toxins that Sheila would be able to convince her nemesis to commit suicide.
When that didn’t work, Sheila attempted to blow Lauren and Tom up on a yacht during Lauren’s honeymoon with Michael (Christian LeBlanc) (FYI, Michael is Tom’s stepson.) Sheila’s plan wound up backfiring, and Tom turned the tables on Sheila, holding her and Lauren captive alone together in a bomb shelter.
In a twist of irony, the only way for Sheila and Lauren to survive was by relying on each other until Paul (Doug Davidson) showed up to rescue them. However, he only managed to save Lauren in time before the shelter collapsed, with Sheila left inside presumed dead. Of course, Sheila was very much alive.
She next appeared in Genoa City with plastic surgery to look identical to Lauren’s best friend Phyllis (Michelle Stafford). Long story short, when it came to this scenario, Sheila pretended to be Phyllis, used it to her advantage and wound up holding Lauren, her new son Fenmore, the real Phyllis and her new daughter Summer hostage.
We won’t even go into that time when Sheila’s kids with Tom, Ryder (Wilson Bethel) and Daisy (Yvonne Zima), carried on Sheila’s vendetta with Lauren and attempted to kill her. For those Bold and Beautiful fans wondering, yes, Finn (Tanner Novlan) has maternal siblings. Back in 2003, Sheila also allegedly had a child named Diana Carter with Ridge’s (Thorsten Kaye) biological father Massimo Marone (Joseph Mascolo), but after Sheila made that big reveal, the child was never really discussed again.
Back to Lauren and Sheila. After all that history, we certainly hope their shared past will be rehashed in The Young and the Restless/Bold and the Beautiful crossover event. We imagine Lauren being horrified to discover her longtime enemy is alive and well in LA. Perhaps Lauren will swallow her disgust and take time to share her experiences with Deacon (Sean Kanan), with the hopes he’ll end his relationship with Sheila. Although a move like that may provoke Sheila to do something rash.
Either way, Young and the Restless fans everywhere are probably joining us in anticipation of a possible showdown between these two legendary soap characters. It’s been years since Lauren and Sheila last met.
New episodes of The Young and the Restless air weekdays on CBS. Episodes become available to stream on Paramount Plus.
