The character was portrayed by Sarah Michelle Gellar from February 24, 1993, to July 3, 1995,[1] and by Alicia Minshew from January 2002 until the show's series finale on September 23, 2011.

Emerging as one of daytime television's most popular and layered characters,[4][5] Kendall was originally written as a complex villain, described as a "complicated bad girl"[6] and "the scheming daughter of the biggest schemer of them all, Erica Kane,"[7] but was later reformed.

Kendall has been the subject of Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome (SORAS), which caused the show's producers to "de-SORAS" her mother, Erica Kane, portrayed by Susan Lucci.

[4] Many teenage actors in New York auditioned for the role, and the show's producers were adamant about keeping the character's storyline a secret.

She was angry for being "abandoned" at birth – even though going through the pregnancy had resulted from a rape, which Kendall was unaware of – and determined to exact revenge against Erica as payback.

"[17] Regarding the character's years on the show, Gellar said, "I seduced my stepfather, and when he wouldn't sleep with me, I slept with the stable boy, cried rape, and my mother stabbed him with a letter opener.

She became a household name to the soap opera medium, and "[f]ans wrote to her to tell her she reminded them of Natalie Wood and people stopped her in the street".

[4] Gellar won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1995 for the portrayal,[19] but eventually left the role in June 1995 to pursue other acting opportunities, last airing on July 3.

"Judy pulled me into a room after my screen test and told me, 'I want you to know that the role is for Susan Lucci's daughter Kendall who was originally played by Sarah Michelle Gellar,'" said Minshew.

She arrives in Pine Valley, Pennsylvania as a teenage runaway and aspires to a job at Enchantment, her mother's cosmetics company, keeping her identity a secret at first.

Mona suspects Kendall is the daughter Erica bore at 14 after being raped on her 14th birthday by movie actor Richard Fields.

Jealous of the attention her half-sister Bianca Montgomery receives after a horse-riding accident in May 1993, Kendall blurts out her real identity to Erica, who welcomes the young woman into her life as her daughter and invites her to live with her.

Enraged, Erica accuses Dimitri of raping her daughter and stabs him with a letter opener when she hallucinates him as Richard Fields.

She and Anton move into the Hunting Lodge at Wildwind near the end of April 1994, where she meets Julia Santos, igniting a lasting rivalry.

Dimitri, who has since learned Anton is his son, hires Kendall as his personal assistant on the same condition that she stop her schemes against her mother.

However, hurt by her history with Erica, Kendall secretly agrees to write a tell-all book about her mother with Del Henry, a writer who initially proposed this idea to her while she was still incarcerated.

She renews her relationship with her adoptive mother, Alice Hart, after her father, Bill, dies suddenly from heart problems in June 1995, leaving Kendall grief-stricken.

When Aidan Devane catches Kendall searching for evidence she is being framed, she attempts distract him with seduction but is found by Ryan in this position.

Her relationship with Erica, which has grown closer over the previous months, is again strained because of the marriage to Michael and the revelation that Bianca is pregnant with his child.

In an effort to help protect Bianca when her pregnancy is nearly discovered, Kendall claims that she, herself, is pregnant with Michael's child after marrying him.

He proposes to Greenlee to help her out at Fusion but when an infuriated Kendall learns of this, she locks her nemesis in a room to stop the marriage.

To help Kendall be on equal footing at Fusion with Greenlee, Zach Slater offers to marry her and give her his shares of Cambias Industries.

Zach comes to consider Spike as his own son, though Kendall shares custody with Ryan and his wife Annie Lavery at the time.

Kendall conceives her second son, Ian, with Zach during their second marriage in February 2007 while the "Satin Slayer" terrorized Pine Valley.

ABC executives decided to capitalize on Kendall's popularity by having the character ponder the idea of a nightclub, and then extend that to real-life events.

Though the "Fusion girls" are shown to love the idea, Babe Carey Chandler does not, for fear that another nearby bar will tempt her alcoholic husband (JR) and send him on yet another destructive path.

The nightclub also manages to acquire several famous real-life reporters, who portray themselves while the residents of Pine Valley walk down the red carpet.

he said, as he sipped his double half-caf, no-foam, extra hot, nonfat, 30% soy latte delivered by his assistant, Serge.

Parker's drug and alcohol binging at late-night glitterati parties endanger the reputation of Flair and its new perfume, and a mysterious phone call to Avery from a manipulative woman claiming to be Avery's mother (a nod to Susan Lucci's character, Erica Kane) throws everything into a heady cloud of smoke.

Romance aficionados will find Avery's two love affairs (with a dashing newsmagazine producer and a quick-witted yet sensitive billionaire, natch) intoxicating, but the denouement lacks punch—perhaps because soaps never have to come up with an ending.