Happy Pride Month, The Young and the Restless! Here’s a look back at the soap’s LGBTQ+ characters and storylines throughout the years, from unexpected coming outs to a Genoa City supercouple.
Young and Restless… and Gay
Y&R has had a handful of LGBTQ+ characters, starting with Phillip Chancellor III (Thom Bierdz). It was decades after faking his own death that Phillip returned and came out as gay in 2009. Around the same time, things for messy for Rafe (Yani Gellman), who was gay and seduced by (straight) Adam (then-Michael Mulney, who recently documented saving a baby deer) in order to distract him from getting too close to one of Adam’s mischievous plots.
The most surprising gay character of them all was Fen (Zach Tinker, who recently celebrated a birthday), who brought a boy named Trey home and introduced him to his parents as his boyfriend without any inkling to the audience that he was part of the community. Did this unexpected character development come from Tinker’s time playing the openly gay Sonny on Days of Our Lives?
Teriah
The best known LGBTQ+ couple on Y&R has always been Tessa (Cait Fairbanks) and Mariah (Camryn Grimes) – affectionately known by viewers as “Teriah.” Although Tessa was first introduced as Noah’s (then-Robert Adamson) girlfriend, it wasn’t a long until she and Mariah were unable to control their feelings for each other and Tessa cheated on Noah with his sister.
Despite the rockiness they’ve endured over the years – like Tessa writing songs based on Mariah’s personal journal entries and Mariah cheating on Tessa with another girl – Teriah were happily married in 2022 and later became moms to their adoptive daughter, Aria (Maddie and Millie Ingle).
Which LGBTQ+ storyline has been your favorite on Y&R? Let us know in the comments.
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