When The Young and the Restless introduced Alex Donnelley as Diane Jenkins in 1982, the scheming Cheryl Tiegs wannabe pursued Jabot Cosmetics honcho Jack Abbott with the singleminded goal of becoming… um, Genoa City’s top model. Hey, it was certainly better than being Genoa City’s second-best model!
After Jack married poor, innocent Patty Williams to prove to dad John that he was a big enough boy to run their cosmetics dynasty, Diane kept right on sleeping with him and finally blackmailed him into making her — yesss! — Wisconsin’s most prominent poser. On the downside, the affair not only resulted in Patty losing Jack’s baby but her marbles, too. As you can see, even decades later, she wasn’t able to get them back. (Or maybe you can’t see; that veil is hella thick!)
By and by — or by and goodbye — Diane moved on to Andy Richards, who should’ve known better, what with working alongside Patty’s brother Paul and all. But he fell lunkhead over heels for the conniver, going so far as to put a ring on it… which in no way, shape or form slowed her roll when she decided to take up with Jack yet again.
A decade after losing both Andy and Jack, Diane returned to Genoa City to start a new career as an architect. Oh, who are we kidding? The only designs with which she came back were the ones that she had on Jack. Mind you, they’d only been engaged for about the length of a commercial break before she threw over her fiancé to marry his nemesis, Victor Newman.
Did Diane manage to steal Victor out from under true love Nikki? Yes. Did Diane manage to keep Victor away from true love Nikki? Of course not! But the master manipulator was nothing if not resourceful. Upon learning that Victor had had his sperm frozen, Diane swiped a sample and got herself pregnant. The joke was on her, however…
Victor turned out not to be the father of Diane’s son Kyle at all. Apparently, sperm samples get stolen and switched on the regular in Genoa City, so — what are the odds?!? — Diane wound up giving birth to a baby boy who should’ve been calling Jack Dada.
Eventually deciding to make lemonade out of lemons, Diane (then Susan Walters) pursued Jack anew. The fact that by this point Kyle’s pop was happily hitched to Phyllis Summers was of no consequence to the vixen. Seriously, when had a little thing like a wedding band given her pause? That had always been a challenge that she couldn’t wait to meet… in bed.
Determined to drive a wedge between Jack and Phyllis, Diane went so far as to burn down the Abbott pool house with herself in it. If he thought that his new love had tried to fricassee his old one, Diane reckoned, surely their romance would be set aflame again. It was not.
Diane briefly flirted with both Andy and the idea of giving their relationship another go. But upon remembering why she’d cheated on him in the first place, she opted to just go herself, leaving town and taking Kyle with her.
In 2010, Diane returned to Genoa City played by future General Hospital star Maura West (Ava). Jack’s ex said that she wanted to let him connect with his son, but let’s be real, the only connections that really held her interest were with the local menfolk.
Once more, Diane exchanged vows with Victor that carried all the weight of a napkin in a stiff breeze. At the same time, the mantrap proceeded to test the bounciness of bedsprings with everyone from Ashley Abbott’s husband Tucker McCall to stepson Nick. If only she’d realized that the kind of “laid” that she should have been focused on was…
In no time, Diane had turned all of Genoa City against her. Well, at least the parts of it that weren’t against her to begin with. When she turned up as dead as a doornail, everyone who was anyone was a suspect. Ultimately, it was discovered that Nikki, the wife for whom Victor had dumped Diane (yes, again), had put a bit too much emphasis on the “fatal” part of “femme fatale.”
In the years that followed, Jack went from one doomed relationship (Genevieve Atkinson, anyone?) to another (Phyllis, Round 11), while Kyle grew up and was recast so often that it was a wonder he didn’t have an unusually handsome identity crisis. Through it all, Diane, what with being dead and all, was neither seen nor heard from.
… who the heck is Taylor Jensen? We had to ask when Walters returned to Young & Restless in March 2022 as a woman interested in buying the home of Jack’s late son, Keemo. A woman who — you’d have to be blind not to notice — looked exactly like Diane. Or, well, like the Diane before the last one. Weirder still, she really was Diane. What the… ?!?
Turned out, Deacon Sharpe had helped Diane fake her death before anybody got the bright idea to kill the town pariah for real. She’d intended to come back for Kyle, but… what’s that saying? Life after death got in the way? Something like that. At any rate, Jack wanted nothing to do with his ex. She may not have been dead, but she was sure dead to him.
Approximately 12 seconds after finding out about Diane’s resurrecton, Phyllis hit the sheets with Jack as a way of staking her claim. “I feel so used!” he all but gasped when he found out why she’d so suddenly wanted to tuck him in. Then he re-dumped the supposed love of his life and thawed toward Diane so fast that she scarcely had time to gloat to her rival.
While all of Genoa City offered Diane a warm… well, a heated welcome back, there was only one person whose reaction to her presence mattered to her.
If Kyle was willing to give Diane a chance, she was more than willing to put up with the crap that everybody else gave her. And, though initially wary, her son did indeed open his arms to her. He even hired her to do PR at Marchetti. What could possibly go wrong? Daughter-in-law Summer Newman could also put her mom Phyllis on the payroll, thus turning the office break room into an unintended Thunderdome.
After Phyllis formed the I Hate Diane Club with Nikki and Jack’s sister Ashley, she brought to Genoa City her foe’s shady former partner in crime, Jeremy Stark. But his arrival on the scene had exactly the opposite of the intended effect.
The threat that Jeremy posed only served to bring Diane and Jack closer — to the point that he popped the question. Finally, Phyllis had to concede defeat.
Insisting that while she herself had changed over the years, Diane couldn’t possibly have, Phyllis badmouthed Jack’s fiancée up one side of Genoa City and down the other. When that only wound up making her look bad, not her sworn enemy — go figure! — Phyllis made the scene of all scenes at the bicentennial gala, then faked her death in hopes of framing Diane.
Advertisement
