Kendall Hart

Kendall Hart was a major, then later a recurring antagonist on the ABC-TV American soap opera, All My Children. She was the daughter by rape of the series' central character, Erica Kane. She was played during her character's first and most intense run by Sarah Michelle Gellar, her first major work on television.

When Erica was fourteen, she was raped by Richard Fields, an aging actor friend of her father, Director Eric Kane, who apparently often targeted young girls. Unable to deal with her trauma or the resulting pregnancy, Erica gave the baby girl she had up for adoption. Taken in by the Harts, the family eventually moved to Florida. At some point, Kendall learned who her birth mother was, and built up a fantasy of meeting her and becoming part of her glamorous life. To that end, Kendall ran away to Erica's home in Pine Valley (variously placed in either Eastern Pennsylvania or Upstate New York), seeking a Hollywood reunion of Mother and long-lost child. Pretending to be homeless, she was hired by Erica as her assistant, and quickly befriended Erica's younger daughter, her half-sister Bianca Montgomery. Kendall was in for a shock while working for the demanding, often egotistical Erica. For her part, Erica's own mother, Mona Kane, saw a birthmark on Kendall unique to the women of her family but said nothing.

Things came to a head when, her fantasy crumbling, Kendall lied and told Bianca that Erica wanted them to go on a trip together. Panicking when both of them were missing, Erica learned from her mother and the Harts who Kendall really was, and convinced her to drive back to them. By this point, Bianca now feared and disliked Kendall, who had in essence kidnapped her. Kendall sometimes vacillated between genuine affection for her little sister and petty jealousy for the girl her mother kept. Erica finally sat Kendall down and said in no uncertain terms that she could not be her mother, and how she came into the world. Begging her to understand, Erica also asked Kendall to go back to Florida with the Harts, since her very presence reminded her of the horror of her rape, which she had pushed aside up to that point. ( A upwards retcon of Kendall's age was performed about this time, since originally she was supposed to be Gellar's age, an impossibility considering Susan Lucci's age, Erica's stated age, and the fact Erica had Kendall when she was not yet fifteen).

Rather than accept the reality, Kendall took the request to leave as more of Erica's pettiness, and refused to believe the story of how she was conceived. Over the next eighteen months, she set out repeatedly to ruin Erica's life. So brutal were Kendall's tactics, many in Pine Valley not inclined to sympathize with Erica rallied behind her, which sadly only increased Kendall's resolve as well as her sense of persecution. These efforts included tricking Erica into believing her husband Dimitri Valtane had attacked and sexually assaulted Kendall, causing Erica to stab him and be placed on trial, wherein Kendall denied ever having said this. Fashion clients deserted Erica and her husband divorced her. Erica spent Christmas of that year in prison, awaiting further hearings on her sanity. Kendall finally topped even herself when she brought her biological father to town, wherein he told an incredibly biased version of Kendall's conception and gleefully taunted his one-time victim. Kendall gained a heroic if naive ally in Dimitri's own long-lost son, who she married. To her credit, when Kendall found Fields trying to rape Bianca, she woke up from her vengeful delusions and agreed to reveal her perjury in court. However, Erica showed that Kendall's venegeance-seeking was an inherited thing. Part of their agreement about Kendall's testimony involved Erica's lawyers getting her charges reduced. Instead, Erica used the shattered Kendall to exonerate herself, then hung her out to dry. While grim, few in Pine Valley faulted Erica for wanting to be rid of the sometimes-rabid Kendall.

While Kendall's prison-term was a typical soap-opera length (Real life courts are very harsh on willful perjurers), she still kept trying to hurt Erica, even though several residents flatly told her to go back to the Harts in Florida. It might have been good advice; since she could no longer operate in secret, nor did she have anyone left who didn't know who and what she was, her ability to hurt Erica was now almost routinely and comically turned back on her. Even Erica's enemies regarded her as unreliable and best if let alone. The closest thing she had to a friend in this period was fellow former inmate Janet Green, a killer out of Pine Valley's past given a new face and identity. After one more petty scheme, even her husband, her most stalwart defender, divorced her.

Coming to a partial reconciliartion with her mother, Kendall finally left town. This was in part due to tensions between Lucci and Gellar, which are said to remain to this day.

In 2002, Kendall's character was finally recast, but never rose to cause the kind of trouble she did during that first two year rampage.