When The Young and the Restless introduced the character of Sheila Carter in 1990, we initially thought that she was just the high-haired new nurse at Genoa City Memorial Hospital. How wrong we were! In the time that it took her to arch an eyebrow, her crush on married Dr. Scott Grainger went from a mild infatuation to a full-blown…
Not only did Sheila drug Lauren Fenmore’s husband in order to take advantage of him, the villainess used her subsequent pregnancy to guilt him into marriage, stole his and Lauren’s newborn to replace her own ill-fated baby, and tried to send to the morgue anyone who dared to get in her way. When finally the walls started closing in on her, she decided that it was time to…
After faking her death in Genoa City, Sheila headed to Los Angeles, home of The Bold and the Beautiful. There, she turned over a new leaf and… Ha. Just kidding. A psycho to the core, she got right up to her old tricks, fixating on moneybags Eric Forrester to the point that she ran off his son Rick’s nanny and tampered with paternity tests to clear her path to marriage. She might have gotten away with it, too, had her former foe not showed up for…
Upon learning that Sheila hadn’t gone to hell but, ironically, the City of Angels, Lauren threatened to spill all of her tormentor’s secrets to Eric. “Do it,” Sheila said (well, more or less), “and I’ll reveal to Scott that you cheated on him with Bill Spencer Brad Carlton!” The two of them could have gone on this way forever, and probably would have, had Scott not croaked, inexplicably making his dying wish that his widow say “bygones.”
After Sheila (cough) accidentally killed her first shrink, she wound up kidnapping his successor, James Warwick, with whom she conceived a child. (Oh, James!) Hoping to keep poor Mary from being raised by the frequently homicidal maniac, the psychiatrist suggested that eh, never mind about his feelings for Maggie Forrester, he and Sheila should get married instead. It did not go well.
Four years after abducting her daughter and going on the lam, Sheila returned to L.A., where — when not deciding who to poison or drown next — she became embroiled in love affairs with both scarves and Ridge Forrester’s biological father, Massimo Marone. And in her spare time? Mommie Dearest attempted to land Rick as a husband for Mary by… Wait, seriously?
To drive a wedge between Rick and babymama Amber Moore, Sheila hired a himbo to drug Mary’s rival and take her to bed. When later he was all, “I don’t feel quite right about this,” Sheila significantly shortened his life expectancy by releasing a jar full of bees into his apartment (and, from the looks of this picture, also stealing the Rolodex card on which he’d written the number for 911).
Foiled at every turn, Sheila embarked on a crime spree that should have gotten her put away for the kind of life sentence that ends with an exclamation point. By the time she was done, there wasn’t a bridge that she hadn’t burned, a detractor at whom she hadn’t taken aim.
… that’s the wrong one.’ As this image subtly suggests, Mary was none too pleased that Mom had made her persona non grata not only with crush Rick but with pretty much everyone who read a newspaper or owned a TV. (Today, of course, being related to a violent criminal would probably have gotten the erstwhile Erica Lovejoy a talk show and a cover shoot for In Touch.)
Look at the expressions on Sheila’s henchmen; even they were like, “Bro, I don’t care what she says, you better do what she says.” Mind you, all Sheila really wanted after kidnapping Ridge (then Ronn Moss) on his and Brooke’s South American honeymoon in 2003 was for him to behave long enough for her to collect the ransom from Mojo and vamoose with his daughter, Diana.
… and then there’s whatever possessed Sheila to stalk Lauren all the way back to The Young and the Restless, where she played mind games with the redhead’s unwitting son, Scotty, “haunted” her longtime nemesis and embarked on a new career that would serve her well in future years. Or at least would find her, well, serving in future years.
That’s right, folks. It was during her Genoa City homecoming that Sheila stuck on a rubber nose, chomped down on some fake teeth, pulled out her best Eliza Doolittle accent and passed herself off as Jennifer Mitchell, the worst waitress ever to take an order at Gina’s.
It seemed like old times when Sheila crashed Lauren’s honeymoon with Michael Baldwin and started one of the knock-down, drag-out fights for which they are so well-known. But that was just the appetizer course, as far as the madwoman was concerned. It was the entree that would really be…
Sheila’s master plan? Kidnap Lauren and blow her up along with accomplice du jour “Terrible Tom” Fisher. The results of that master plan? Kevin’s father nearly turned the tables on his treacherous lover, who was lucky to make it out of the harebrained scheme with a pulse. Naturally, she was so relieved that she began…
Specifically, Phyllis Summers’ life. Never one to count her blessings, Sheila underwent extensive plastic surgery to turn herself into a replica of Nick Newman’s then-wife, all to once again perturb Lauren. When the cockamamie plot, as they all do, went up in smoke, Sheila was said to be really, most sincerely dead. Mm-hmm, and if you believed that, you probably also think you’re the proud owner of a certain bridge in Brooklyn.
In 2017, Sheila turned up on The Bold and the Beautiful again, not just alive but with her old face. (Mmkay… ) Though she insisted that she wanted to make up for past wrongs — how exactly would one go about un-trying to kill people? — she was greeted with the tawny L.A. version of pitchforks and torches: skeptical looks and fireplace pokers.
Eric made it clear the distance that he wanted his former wife to keep. But c’mon, we all know what a sucker he is. In the time that it takes Brooke to swap spouses, he’d let Sheila become a thorn in the side of new wife Quinn Fuller and as big a threat to their marriage as the missus’ makeout sessions with Ridge.
Over and over, Sheila found herself asking that very question. And over and over, we found ourselves pointing to pictures like these as the answer. The only thing that had changed was Sheila’s punching bag. Instead of wailing on Lauren, it was Quinn who came running anytime she heard a can of whupass being opened.
Sheila may never get her painting hung above the Forrester fireplace for longer than it takes to snap a selfie, but in the summer of 2021, the Il Gardino waitress turned up again with something that she’d never had before: a blood tie to the Forresters, courtesy of her surprise son, Steffy’s fiancé, “Finn” Finnegan. Maybe now she’d be able to straighten up and fly right. Sure, and maybe this would be the time that Brooke and Ridge’s marriage lasted!
After revealing herself as Steffy’s new monster-in-law, Sheila was stunned, positively stunned, not to be welcomed into the Forrester clan with open arms. But she told herself that if Taylor Hayes could rise from the dead after she’d killed her, anything was possible. So the busy bee set about replacing nemesis Brooke’s nonalcoholic champagne with Folgers Crystals real bubbly as part of a bonkers scheme to reunite Taylor with Ridge and win a spot in the family’s Christmas portraits forevermore. Hey, it made sense to her.
As word spread that Brooke hadn’t fallen off the wagon but had been pushed, Steffy made it clear for the umpteenth time that Sheila was never going to play any role in Finn’s life except that of a distant memory. Reacting poorly, Mommie Dearest whipped out a gun, intent on making her son a widower. But instead, Finn showed up just in time to take the bullet that Sheila had hoped would put Steffy in an early grave. D’oh!
As quickly as Sheila was arrested, she broke out of jail and discovered that rumors of Finn’s death had been greatly exagerrated. So she hastened rival mom Li Finnegan’s demise — or so she thought — and cast herself and Finn in their own version of Misery. What she hadn’t counted on was just how poorly he was going to react to her shooting spree, not to mention his desire to throttle her on his way toward reuniting with Steffy.
Reminding us that there’s no length “toe” which she won’t go to avoid paying for her crimes, Sheila faked her own death — yes, again — strapped on her finest Connie Britton wig and seduced her latest lust object, Deacon Sharpe. Understandably, he was horrified to discover what he had done — and who. But that was nothing compared to his upset at being informed that, whether he wanted one or not, he now had a roommate.
Fickle much? As into Deacon as Sheila had seemed to be, somewhere along the line, she apparently had made a side piece of Bill Spencer. Erm, how? Why? Well, since neither of his standby ex-wives would take him back — and he’d never heard of Tinder — he saw as his only option hooking up with the local homicidal maniac.
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