Developed by the soap's creator and head writer James E. Reilly, Chad was portrayed by two actors over the course of the show: Donn Swaby (1999 to 2002) and Charles Divins (2002 to 2007).

The illegitimate son of the evil patriarch Alistair Crane, Chad is introduced as a music producer from Los Angeles who is searching for his biological family.

His romance with Whitney is complicated by the possibility they may be engaging in an incestuous relationship as Chad is initially believed to be her half-brother, and later revealed to be her adoptive cousin.

Chad attempts to reconcile with Whitney, after his affair with Vincent is revealed, before being killed by his father Alistair while trying to protect his best friend, Ethan Winthrop.

Sheraton Kalouria, senior vice president of NBC's daytime programming,[1] described the show's use of color-blind casting as part of an effort to build a diverse pool of characters that best reflected the various ethnic and racial groups living in the United States.

Kalouria believed the show was set apart from other soap operas by the inclusion of "the African American Russells and the Hispanic Lopez-Fitzgeralds".

[9] Chad was initially characterized as a "street-kid" by the show's official website[10] and "a tough dude from the hood" by David Alexander Nahmod of the Bay Area Reporter.

[6] An article on Soaps.com wrote that Divins adapted the character from being a "West Coast music producer to [an] ambitious and tortured Crane heir".

[17] Chad Harris-Crane first appears in the episode airing on September 23, 1999, in which, after discovering he was adopted, he moves from Los Angeles to Harmony to find his real parents.

In a desperate attempt to keep her past hidden, Eve burns down Orville's house and any evidence inside and places him in a retirement home.

Crystal also offers information about Chad's birth and parents, but is killed by a French drug cartel's assassin Antoine, who mistakes her for socialite Sheridan Crane, before she can deliver it to him.

Identified as the Vendetta plot, the show's 2006 summertime extravaganza centers on Alistair Crane luring Whitney, Chad, and several other residents of Harmony, to Rome.

Unbeknownst to Whitney, Chad previously began a sexual relationship with the tabloid reporter Vincent Clarkson at an unspecified time around the Vendetta plot, and he continues the affair after their reunion and wedding.

Chad is unaware that Vincent is Eve's actual child with Julian; thus, although his relationship with Whitney was not incestuous, he ironically committed incest with his half-brother's son.

He is also initially oblivious to the fact that Vincent is intersex, and is the same person as Valerie Davis, the executive assistant to Crane Industries' vice president Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald.

While confessing his affair to his friends Paloma Lopez-Fitzgerald and Noah Bennett, Chad repeatedly insists that he is not gay, and that his relationship with Vincent is based solely on sex.

During the show's season five premiere, Divins made a cameo appearance on The Soup to explain to McHale that he was not his character and was neither dead nor gay.

[24] Passions made daytime history by being the first to depict two men having sex, but the pairing of Chad and Vincent drew less media attention than the gay relationships in As the World Turns and One Life to Live.

Some felt the scenes between Chad and Vincent were "appalling" and inappropriate for daytime television, while one viewer praised the soap opera for "continu[ing] their outstanding jobs as they teach the people of today's world about daily life experiences".