When Days of Our Lives vet Tracey E. Bregman was cast by The Young and the Restless as Lauren Fenmore in 1983, she thought that the gig was going to be one of the short-term variety. Ha! Decades later, she remains as integral a part of the fabric of Genoa City as Victor Newman’s mustache.
As sweet as Traci Abbott was, that was as sour as Lauren was, especially when it came to the object of their affections, pop dreamboat Danny Romalotti. There was no low to which the redhead wouldn’t stoop to ensure that she was the fan with whom he’d, ahem, rock on.
Though Lauren and Danny made beautiful music together — and boasted Genoa City’s largest collection of mousses and styling gels — theirs was not a love song for the ages.
Years later, Lauren again would stick it to Traci by carrying on with her former husband, Brad Carlton. And by “carrying on,” we mean “having such enthusiastic sex that she gave the stud muffin a heart attack.” Clearly, Lauren didn’t know her own strength!
As Lauren grew — and grew up — she gravitated toward straight-laced private eye Paul Williams, much to the chagrin of both his disapproving mother and the singer’s stalker, Shawn Garrett. But what really doomed the lovers’ marriage was her sending a nude selfie of Paul to an X-rated magazine.
On the rebound from her split with Paul, Lauren tied the knot with M.D. Scott Grainger, which turned out to be the biggest mistake of her life, as it invited into it his stalker, evil Nurse Sheila Carter. After her nemesis seduced Scott and lost the child that resulted, she just up and stole Lauren’s!
After Sheila was presumed dead, Lauren learned that she had just joined The Bold and the Beautiful. Er, moved to L.A. Same diff. There, the mortal enemies renewed their feud to the point that Sheila tried to drown Lauren in a hot tub. As if that would work after attempting to burn Lauren alive in a genuine barn-burner hadn’t!
Needless to say, while on the West Coast, Lauren also sampled the local menfolk — including pal Stephanie Forrester’s husband, Eric. When the formidable Forrester matriarch found out about the affair, let’s just say that suddenly Sheila didn’t seem so scary anymore!
What is it about Lauren that attracts obsessive types? After returning to Genoa City, she became the fixation of unstable Kevin Fisher… who accidentally brought her into the orbit of his older brother, Michael Baldwin, aka her true love.
First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a psycho to ensure that the happy couple lives a life filled with fear and anxiety? No, that can’t be it, can it? Nevertheless, no sooner had Lauren wed Michael than Sheila returned to, you know, Sheila up everything.
After Lauren gave birth to her and Michael’s son Fen — short for Fenmore, of course — Sheila came back yet again, this time to wreak the same old havoc with a brand-new face, that of her foe’s gal pal, Phyllis Summers.
No, as much as we’d always hoped The Young and the Restless would revisit Lauren’s relationship with Paul, this photo isn’t of them exploring their lingering feelings, it’s of Sheila’s sister Sarah using her plastic-surgery’d face to make everyone think Michael’s missus was straying.
You coulda knocked over Lauren with a feather when she discovered that Jill Abbott was the half sibling that Daddy Dearest had never bothered to mention. Mind you, you wouldn’t have had to use a feather. At first, as you can see, Lauren and Jill seized every opportunity to try to knock one another over.
Swiss boarding school sounded better and better to Lauren when Fen (then Max Ehrich) became a teenager so troubled that he teamed up with Summer Newman to make bullying their favorite extracurricular. “How’s about you spend a few years with Auntie Jill, son?”
During an especially rough spot in Lauren’s marriage to Michael, she let sexypants bartender Carmine Basco serve her more than cosmos. As a result, he became — wait for it, wait for it — obsessed with her. Kidnapping, “murder” and more ensued.
Or at least it wasn’t for Lauren when she locked lips with Cane Ashby. While Michael was pushing away his wife rather than allow her to support him through his cancer battle, she had, let’s say, a moment with the handsome Aussie… that added a whole layer of mess to not only her marriage but his relationship with Lily Winters.
In 2017, Lauren’s firstborn, late husband Scott’s namesake, passed through Genoa City again just long enough to hook up with Sharon Newman, cheat with her sometime sister-in-law Abby and make us all go, “Wait, we’re supposed to believe Lauren has a kid that old?”
Nowadays, Lauren is the picture of contentment. She’s mad about rather than at her husband. She’s at the top of her game professionally. She hasn’t surrendered to temptation with a sexy bartender in eons. Yeah, she’s got everything… except for a frontburner storyline. Dare we hope that’s next?
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