Soap Masterpieces November Throwbacks: Melissa Claire Egan’s Debut On ‘Y&R’ – Chelsea Lawson Comes To Genoa City

Today’s November throwback is a spotlight on Melissa Claire Egan’s debut on “The Young and the Restless.” Her first episode aired on November 11, 2011. She celebrated her four-year anniversary on Wednesday. Chelsea Lawson was originally cast for a handful of episodes that would be successful in driving a wedge between Billy [Billy Miller] and Victoria Newman [Amelia Heinle]. After four years, it is pretty clear that Chelsea Lawson-Newman is not going anywhere.

Billy Abbot was away from his family in Myanmar; he met Chelsea at a local bar where she was a bartender. She was cute and fun; he was drawn to her. He ended up sleeping with her before returning home to Genoa City. After returning home after being arrested in Myanmar, Billy asked Cane [Daniel Goddard] to look for Chelsea to help prove his innocence. He couldn’t have committed the crime because he was with Chelsea at the time. Cane finds her but doesn’t know that the bartender was Chelsea. He begins speaking to the bartender, but when he went to ask her questions about Billy, she disappears. He couldn’t find her, so he returned to Genoa City.

Two months later, Chelsea shows up at his doorstep looking for Billy- only she knew him as Liam. She tells Billy and Victoria that she is pregnant with Billy’s child after he raped her in Myanmar. She tells them that he was drunk and didn’t know what he was doing. She agrees to take a paternity test because she knew the child she was carrying was Billy’s child.

Secretly, Billy meets with Chelsea, and he records her without her knowledge. She tells him that the sex was consensual, and she is a con artist that scams tourist by claiming they raped her. She says on tape they had a one-night stand, and she was never raped by Billy. She agrees to allow Victoria to adopt their son and raise him as her child.

Chelsea’s mother arrives in town, Anita [Catherine Bach] which causes more conflict with Billy and Victoria, especially after they invited her to live with them since she was expecting his child. Victoria learns that her father set the whole scam up in an attempt to break up her marriage to Billy. After the baby was born, Chelsea signed over parental rights to Victoria. Do you remember Chelsea’s first storyline? Did you think she would have last four-plus years based on her first storyline?