| J.R. Chandler | |||||||||||||||||
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 Jacob Young as J.R. Chandler |
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| All My Children | |||||||||||||||||
| Portrayed by | Jacob Young (2003-present) Charlotte and Margaret Baughman (May 1989-July 1992) Kevin Alexander (August 1992-June 1996) Jesse McCartney (July 1998-August 2001) Jonathan Bennett (November 2001-September 2002) Andrew Ridings (October 2002-February 2003) |
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| First appearance | 1989 | ||||||||||||||||
| Created by | Agnes Nixon | ||||||||||||||||
| Profile | |||||||||||||||||
| Aliases | Adam Chandler II (birth name) Junior (1st nickname; used until his early teens; Zach Slater uses this as a condescending term thanks to J.R.'s involvement in Kendall's 2006 coma) J.R. or JR (2nd nickname): stands for the suffix "Jr." |
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| Age | 24 | ||||||||||||||||
| Occupation | Former CEO of Chandler Enterprises | ||||||||||||||||
| Title | Heir to the Chandler fortune[1] | ||||||||||||||||
| Residence | Pine Valley, Pennsylvania | ||||||||||||||||
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Adam Chandler, Jr. is a fictional character from the daytime drama All My Children. He is portrayed by actor Jacob Young. Since his teenage years, the character has been commonly known by the nickname "J.R.", both variations of the suffix "Jr." As the son of Adam Chandler and the great nephew of Palmer Cortlandt, J.R. binds the two longtime enemies to each other for life (as does his rarely-seen older cousin, Ross Chandler). A top television anti-hero,[2] as well as one of its greatest bad boys,[3] J.R. is a varying combination of angst. Having battled a drug problem during his teenage years, he now strives to overcome his alcohol addiction, though he occasionally loses the fight. His romantic life has been just as tumultuous, if not more, as his true love and ex-wife Babe Carey[2] has been both his lover and enemy. A father to son Adam Chandler III, latest heir to the Chandler fortune, if there is anything J.R. wants more in the world, it is to always be someone his child can count on. Loyalty extremely important to him, if he is betrayed, he can be deadly. His childhood was difficult and his ruthlessness is an extention of that. Through it all, however, he has managed to remain caring and does not give into his inner demons without resistance. All of this has made J.R. one of the most intriguing and tortured characters in daytime television.[2]
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Background
Character creation
Actor Jacob Young, who had only been on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful (and General Hospital) for a short while before joining All My Children, stated that he had good instincts, but that he "was young and kind of doe-eyed to the world" then. It was not until the actor stepped into the All My Children role of J.R. Chandler that his acting range became more focused on training. He started to use tools he learned in classes and felt that his acting became more refined because of it. With his portrayal of J.R., he explained how that factored in:
They twisted J.R. in a completely different direction. They started off with J.R. not respecting his father and having a lot of elements of his mother in him. He was much more soft. Then they started toying with it and couldn't believe what was coming out of me. I'd always been the nice, honorable guy; I'd never been the character who was stirring the pot.[4]
J.R.'s rich lifestyle was something that Young noted to not being familiar with, stating that the J.R. persona did not come to him until he would put on the suit:
They put me in these nice designer suits, and I suddenly feel like a million bucks. Then I take that million-buck feeling and go a little sinister with it.[4]
One aspect of J.R's personality is his devious dialogue. "When the character is in a good mood and has the upper hand, he has all these one-liners."[4] When working with former All My Children co-star Alexa Havins (ex-Babe Carey), Young would often shock Havins with the character's words. To make sure she was unaware of how he was going to deliver any crass line, he would keep it hidden [during rehearsal]:[4]
You can break the wording down and make it a little more offensive, and I try to nail that because that's what J.R.'s supposed to do.[4]
The writers were looking for an actor who could truly radiate the essence of Adam Chandler's son, and felt that taking J.R. down the path of darkness would help with that. Young, the actor chosen as best suited for the part, detailed the transition:
They wanted it to be 'like father, like son,' so I watched David Canary's (Adam) mannerisms and delivery. I tried to mold those into my own, enough to where I could be his son. They started writing my dialogue like his. He has some one-liners that are pretty funny. David is as big a goofball as I am onset. He's like, 'Here's my boy!' We have a great dynamic together.[4]
Since taking over the role of J.R. Chandler, Young has propelled J.R. into one of the show's more popular characters, as well as one its most hated.
| “ | Have you seen those piercing blue eyes? When they're not flashing with anger, a glimpse of the troubled young man who was deeply wounded by the presumed death of his mother shows through. Like Babe, we could easily fall into the trap of thinking that a little tender loving care from us would fix him right up.[1] | ” |
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— Soaps In Depth magazine on J.R. being a love-to-hate fixture
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Storyline
Childhood and adolescent years
After wealthy tycoon Adam Chandler tries to keep his son away from a young Dixie Cooney, the child's mother, a custody battle ensues, which involves Tad Martin. The child's name is Adam Jr., and Tad, Dixie's true love, is willing to do anything to keep Adam Jr. in Dixie's care. Adam puts a plot into motion to gain sole rights to Junior; he "gaslights" Dixie, later having her committed to a mental institution. Tad soon figures out the devious plot and helps her escape. Tad and Dixie marry in December 1989. After Tad is presumed dead, but later discovered alive, Adam sues for custody rights to Junior, which he wins. A man named Lee Hawkins kidnaps Junior and his half-sister, Hayley Vaughan. They eventually escape, and Tad and Dixie marry for a third time in 1999. This time, Adam tries to put a power play into motion. Tired of Tad's influence over Junior, Adam tries to ship him off to boarding school. Tad and Dixie are able to find out in time.
Junior, who adopts the nickname "J.R." as a teenager, befriends Erica Kane's two daughters, Kendall Hart and Bianca Montgomery.
The trio become very close throughout this time of their youth. J.R. forms a close bond with his stepbrother Jamie Martin, who is the son of Tad and Brooke English. These are calm years for J.R. Chandler. He enters high school and forms a band dubbed DreamStreet. But like everything else in J.R.'s life, the good times do not last.
Dixie becomes romantically involved with David Hayward, which helps to send J.R. out of control. He begins to hang around a tough crowd at school, and pays another classmate to write a term paper for him. He uses foul language, especially directed at his own mother. His anger and frustration leads him to start getting high on ecstasy. This later causes him to crash a car into a guardrail, which nearly kills him, Hayley, and her unborn child. He is sentenced to community service and counseling. In 2002, he is dealt with another big blow, the biggest of his life: Dixie leaves him in the care of Tad while she leaves for Switzerland. Months later, she is killed in a car crash while carrying Tad's unborn baby girl. This leaves J.R. feeling alone in the world, and he clashes with all adult figures. Older now, he becomes closer to Kendall, despite the large gap in their ages. He happily brings Kendall to the Martin Christmas party, just to see the reactions that the couple will get. Eventually, both realize that they do not feel any long-lasting romantic feelings for each other and break off any notion of it. J.R. meets and falls for a girl named Laurie Lewis, who seems to be cut from the same mold as him. But when she eventually kisses Jamie during their relationship and J.R. finds out about it, he is too stunned to do anything about the matter. Instead, he runs away and tells no one where he is going. After a few weeks, Adam finds out through PIs that J.R. is working on a cargo ship. J.R. wanted to get away from Pine Valley to clear his head and not have to deal with the problems he faced.
Start of adulthood with true love found
In October 2003, Tad and Adam, angry at each other for all of their battles over the years, nearly come to blows in the middle of the bar The Pit. Suddenly, J.R. appears, unannounced. Adam is happy to see that his son has returned, but soon changes his mind when he learns that J.R. has met, fallen in love with, and married a young woman after three weeks of knowing her, prior to his return to Pine Valley.
The young woman, Babe Carey, already made her mark on Pine Valley just a night before, this unknown to J.R. and everyone else. Drunk, Babe had met J.R.'s stepbrother, Jamie, and had taken his virginity, a secret shared only by Jamie and Babe.
J.R. reveals that he met Babe on a foggy night in San Diego. She was at the end of a dock crying. Believing that she would take her own life, J.R. began to talk to her. Babe, however, says that no matter how big her problems were, she would never have committed suicide. Thus begins the rocky storybook romance between J.R. and Babe. Adam tries to break them up several times, believing that Babe is only interested in the Chandler fortune, but he fails. It is soon revealed that Babe is still married to a man by the name of Paul Cramer, and the marriage is still valid.
Baby switch and the subsequent distrust
- For the full Baby Switch story, see Pine Valley Pennsylvania: Disasters and major events
In 2004, the producers of All My Children and One Life to Live decide to do a crossover storyline. Babe finds herself pregnant, and does not know if the father is J.R. or Jamie. She soon finds herself in the middle of a thunderstorm with an equally pregnant Bianca. Babe and Bianca's babies are eventually switched by Paul Cramer, with one child presumed dead and the other given to a couple. Once the baby switch is over, J.R. and Babe are hostile enemies, and J.R.'s relationship with his brother and Bianca is over as well, all due to their (with the exception of Bianca's) betrayal and lies during the ordeal. J.R. and Babe divorce, a situation brought on by the "Baby Switch" storyline, which leaves them connected only by their son, Adam Chandler III (later nicknamed Little Adam). J.R. faces a time of his aunt, Di Henry, pretending to be his mother "back from the dead", which takes a toll on his psyche as much as his real mother having died did. Later, a drunk J.R. gets behind the wheel of his car, where Babe tries to keep him from driving. She is unsuccessful, and a speeding J.R. hits Amanda Dillon. Babe shocks J.R. when she confesses to driving the car, protecting him from jail. This endears Babe to J.R., and the two slowly grow closer. J.R., not fully trusting Babe, continues to test her loyalty and Babe passes every test. J.R. finally confesses his love for Babe. By this time, Babe has genuinely fallen for J.R. again and tells him so. They go through more ups and downs, and when J.R.'s mother (real one this time) is revealed to be alive, having purposely "stayed dead", J.R. temporarily loses his sanity and sets up a trap to murder Babe, in what he believes will save his son from Babe causing that kind of pain to the child. Kendall gets caught in J.R.'s trap instead, and when Babe learns that J.R. tried to kill her, she hesitantly tells the police. J.R. is arrested and put in jail. He remains bitter at everyone, especially Babe. He feels Babe betrayed their love. When Adam refuses to pay his bail, J.R. believes he is all alone. His Uncle Stuart pays his bail and the two go on a tour of Pine Valley. J.R. learns that throughout all his troubles, Babe and Jamie still love him, while Dixie blames herself for J.R.'s problems. J.R. decides to be a man about it. He confesses to Babe about setting the trap for her and how he hurt Kendall instead, endangering her unborn baby. Babe is skeptical at the new J.R., but he is willing to go to prison for his sins. Just when it appears that J.R. will be sent to prison for ten years, Babe, urged by Dixie, tells the courtroom that she lied about J.R.'s actions. It is all a mistake. J.R. is in shock, but Babe stands by him. Even when Kendall awakes from her coma and tries to testify that J.R. confessed to her while she was unconscious, it is not enough. J.R. is set free, while various citizens of Pine Valley vow to take revenge on the couple. J.R. and Babe set out to make their relationship work, despite the hatred of people in town.
Cheating and a serial killer
J.R. soon finds out that life will not be simple now that he is a free man. Kendall, Erica Kane (Kendall's mother), Ryan Lavery (ex-lover and friend to Kendall), and Zach Slater (Kendall's husband) make life difficult for him and Babe. Babe grows close to a man named Josh Madden. Frustrated by J.R.'s murder attempt on her and all of their problems, Babe has a one-night stand with Josh, and later continues an emotional affair with him. David Hayward, Babe's father, who plans the Chandler family downfall, learns of this and reveals the affair. At first, J.R. refuses to believe the allegations. Josh, due to a request by Babe, even denies it. Later, however, Josh admits to J.R. that he had sex with Babe. Days later, when Babe tells him that it is true, J.R. goes off the deep end again. He goes to Josh's hotel room while Josh is out, drinks the entire bar and becomes very drunk. Despite the efforts of Bianca, J.R. has revenge on his mind. When Bianca and Erica refuse to let him leave through the door in order to hurt someone, he goes for the second option and jumps through a window, crashing to the patio below, resulting in him being knocked unconscious. Josh finds him bleeding to death. Initially conflicted whether to save J.R., he decides to help him and is able to save his life. When he returns to Babe with J.R.'s blood on him, she immediately thinks that J.R. tried to hurt him. When Josh tells her that it is J.R.'s blood, she completely changes her opinion and rushes to J.R.'s side at the hospital. During J.R.'s recovery, he says that he hates Babe. She betrayed his trust. In pain because of a broken pelvis, he voices that he is an addict and demands to be taken off of pain medication. He refuses to forgive Babe, but is able to grow close to Jamie again. Babe fights to win back J.R.'s trust, but when her bodyguard tells J.R. that she and Josh kissed on New Year's Eve, J.R. also finds out that they were at the Valley Inn with rock star Zarf/Zoe and immediately thinks that Babe and Josh are still seeing each other. He calls his lawyer to find out how to get full custody of Little Adam. Kendall tries to carry out her half of a plan she made with Josh, and tries to get her one-time friend J.R. to come to his senses and dump Babe (so that Josh can have her). The Satin Slayer, a serial killer, had already targeted some of the women of Fusion Cosmetics: Erin Lavery, Simone Torres, and Danielle Frye (who was able to survive). The only women targeted afterwards are Kendall and Babe. Although it appears that the killer is connected to Babe by skipping over her to get to Kendall, he or she strikes the Chandler family. Poison is injected into a batch of peanut butter, which is used for pancakes. The pancakes are meant for Babe, but she decides not to eat them. Instead, Dixie is the one to consume the deadly food and dies in the hospital with Tad by her side. J.R. is devastated and angry at the world, his mother taken from him yet again. He starts to carry out her final wish, but backtracks. While dying, she told him the truth — that Krystal (Babe's mother) is carrying Tad's baby and not Adam's. J.R. uses this for leverage against Babe. He catches Babe and Josh kissing in a shed, as Josh is preparing to leave Pine Valley. He then decides to continue with his divorce and custody case against Babe, despite having started to come back around to a reconciliation and Babe telling him that her kiss with Josh was just goodbye. J.R. confronts Babe with the news about Tad and Krystal's baby, and forces her to choose: either she sign a document relinquishing her custody and all claims to Little Adam permanently or he will tell Adam the truth about Tad and Krystal's baby. Babe is devastated when J.R. voices that she should have died instead of Dixie. In the parking garage of Chandler Enterprises, Babe's bodyguard is killed and Babe is attacked by the Satin Slayer. J.R. is skeptical when he first hears the news, but breaks down when he realizes the truth. Babe is declared dead in the operating room. It is later revealed that Babe is very much alive, that they (Josh and some of his family) slowed down her heart-rate, causing her to go into a coma and then moved her to Zach's casino, knowing that if the Satin Slayer were to consider her dead, she is safe from him. This is not told to J.R., and Josh appears to skip town. J.R., angry and emotionally drained, breaks down in a park, where he finds Zarf/Zoe, who has been beaten badly by the Satin Slayer. Instead of helping Zoe or telling anyone, he leaves her in the park, raising the ire of Bianca. J.R. begins to help Tad, Jamie and Aidan Devane search for the Satin Slayer. It is finally revealed that the Satin Slayer is Alexander Cambias, Sr., Zach's biological father. Other than the people that helped save and hide Babe, only Erica and Krystal know that she is alive. She does not want J.R. to know because of what his long-term reaction would be. J.R. continues to mourn the loss of his true love. However, Erica being Erica, decides to tell J.R. the truth and goes to the Chandler mansion to tell him right away. Tad happens to be there when she does. The three of them rush to the casino. After trying to talk Josh out of his plan to help Babe run away with her son and leave J.R. for good, Erica finally confesses to him that she told J.R. that Babe is still alive. Josh, extremely and understandably angry at her for this, quickly goes to Babe's room only to find J.R. there at her bedside trying to convince her that he is a "changed man" and will never hurt her again. J.R., surprising Babe, thanks Josh for saving her from the Satin Slayer. Krystal decides to tell her secret to Adam, which upsets him greatly. J.R., having kept Krystal and Babe's secret, is then scorned by Adam. He declares that J.R. is no longer his son. J.R. vows to help Babe and Krystal, even hiring Jackson Montgomery as their lawyer in an insurance fraud charge that Adam laid on both. J.R. continues to struggle to win back Babe after she makes it clear that she does not want a romantic life with him anymore. She convinces J.R. to go through with the divorce and share custody of Little Adam.
Rivalry with Adam and Richie
After J.R. makes a play for Chandler Enterprises, his father despises him even more. Despite having the last name "Chandler", J.R. is cut off from his father. He tells his lawyers to stall the divorce from Babe as long as possible, to give himself a chance at reuniting with her. During this time, J.R.'s new baby stepsister, Jenny Carey, is born to Tad and Krystal. After Adam uses Janet Dillon to help kidnap the baby, J.R. works with Tad, Aidan, Jamie, and Amanda to find her. J.R. and Amanda, who grew up together, but had a falling out years before, have a one-night stand. During the investigation, they continue to clash, but at the same time find themselves attracted to each other. When J.R. and Amanda are kindapped, it is later revealed that J.R. set it up to hurt his father. J.R.'s plan comes down around him as he finds out that the men he hired have actually locked him and Amanda in the cellar. When he is rescued by his father thanks to a loan from Zach Slater, he realizes that he has been set up by Zack, who sought revenge for J.R.'s part in Kendall's accident. J.R. tries to make amends for his past actions to his father, vowing that he is not going to change his name to Martin. He quits Chandler Enterprises and gives his stocks to his father and tells Amanda that he is now broke. His next business venture involves Ava Benton, sister of Lily Montgomery, identical in features but not twins. Some time after getting involved with Ava, J.R. is set up by Richie Novak (Babe's latest love interest) to look as though he has killed Zach Slater, who is missing. J.R., having been drunk the night Zach was last seen and without an alibi, as he does not remember the night clearly, is put in jail. Weeks later, he finally remembers. When he finds out that Adam had evidence that could have freed him of the murder charges, but did not present it, he cuts Adam out of his life.
See also
References
- ^ a b Men You Love to Hate. Soaps In Depth (2006-10-24). Retrieved on 2007-12-18.
- ^ a b c The tortured soul anti-hero. Total TV Online.com. Retrieved on 2007-05-23.
- ^ TV Guide Interview, TV Guide (2005-03-22). Retrieved on 2007-12-18
- ^ a b c d e f Lensch, Tonya (2005-04-19). Jacob Young - Young Gun. Soap Opera Weekly. Retrieved on 2007-05-23.
| All My Children | ||
| Characters (Current contract cast only) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Ava Benton | Angie Baxter | Babe Carey | Krystal Carey | Adam Chandler | Colby Chandler | J.R. Chandler | Stuart Chandler | Palmer Cortlandt | Aidan Devane | Amanda Dillon | Myrtle Fargate | Kendall Hart Slater | Del Henry | Jesse Hubbard | Erica Kane | Annie Lavery | Jonathan Lavery | Ryan Lavery | Dre Lerman | Josh Madden | Dr. Joe Martin | Tad Martin | Jackson Montgomery | Lily Montgomery | Sean Montgomery | Hannah Nichols | Richie Novak | Julia Santos | Zach Slater | Greenlee Smythe | ||
| Important crew | ||
| Created by: Agnes Nixon | Headwriters: James Harmon Brown and Barbara Esensten | Executive producer: Julie Hanan Carruthers | ||
| Related topics | ||
| Pine Valley, Pennsylvania | List of cast members of All My Children | List of All My Children characters | ||
