Gameshows and soap operas are daytime and primetime staples. And you’d probably be surprised to find out just how many of your favorite soap stars have battled it out as contestants on these prize-awarding shows.
Who Is The Soap Star In Question?
All of these actresses either currently star in, or are an alum of, one of the four remaining soaps – The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of our Lives, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless. But only one of them can boast that she won big bucks on the game show Wheel of Fortune…and did so BEFORE she was well known to soap opera fans.
But who can that actress be? Is it Lesli Kay (ex-Felicia Forrester, BB), Deidre Hall (Dr. Marlena Evans Black, DAYS), Robin Mattson (ex-Heather Webber, GH) or Melody Thomas Scott (Niki Reed Newman, YR)?
Deidre Hall
At last count, Hall has made four appearances on Wheel of Fortune – three of them as a contestant. However, all those appearances came AFTER she was a household name for her work on the venerable NBC soap.
Robin Mattson
No, Mattson never competed on the much-beloved gameshow. However, her Santa Barbara counterpart most certainly did. Gina Capwell duked it out with a number of other contestants and made it all the way to the bonus round.
She managed to pull out a win by correctly solving the puzzle… which didn’t take much difficulty. The word was BLACKMAIL and it was a concept that the scheming Gina was all too familiar with.
Melody Thomas Scott
Scott was a staple of the gameshow circuit – especially back when the genre was at its zenith. She competed on the likes of Match Game, TattleTales, To Tell the Truth, The New $25,000 Pyramid, and Family Feud. But all those appearances took place long after Scott had established herself as YR’s perpetually-in-peril Nikki.
Lesli Kay
1991: The same year that Kay earned her first acting credit (which was a guest appearance in the police drama Hunter), she scored a windfall of $28,000 while playing on Wheel of Fortune. Six years later, Kay would finally land her first big role: Molly Conlan on As the World Turns.
So if you guessed that the daytime star in question was Lesli Kay, then you were absolutely correct!
