Young & Restless Exclusive: On Her 30th Sharon-versary, Sharon Case Revealed Why She Thought, ‘That’s It, I’m Getting Fired!’

Thirty years ago — on September 14, 1994 — The Young and the Restless finally introduced us to the real Sharon Collins: future Emmy winner Sharon Case. And three decades later, it’s easy to forget — some of you may even have forgotten! — that she wasn’t the first actress cast in the role.

Monica Potter, who’d later go on to star in NBC’s Parenthood, was Sharon No. 1. But as quickly as she was hired, “I was fired because I was terrible,” she said on The Late Show With Craig Ferguson in 2010. She was replaced by Heidi Mark, best known as Playboy‘s Miss July 1995 and the former wife of Motley Crue’s Vince Neil. She lasted two months (and made Soaps.com’s list of Daytime’s Worst Recasts of All Time).

Then, at last, The Young and the Restless discovered Case, who’d been working her way toward soap stardom since the late 1980s. First, she’d been the second of four actresses in three years to play Monica Quartermaine’s long-lost daughter, Dawn Winthrop, on General Hospital (and we thought Sharon was tough to cast!). Then, she’d passed through As the World Turns as off-kilter Debbie Simon. But neither role really tapped her potential. Neither allowed her to make the world sit up and take notice.

Well, that all changed with The Young and the Restless’ Sharon. Ironically, Case didn’t necessarily expect to last much longer than her predecessors. “I mean, I hoped,” she tells Soaps.com. “I thought the character of Nick Newman, being the son of Victor and Nikki, could go [for all these years]. But I didn’t even know if that would happen. It’s not necessarily how these things work.”

Heck, every time “Shick” hit a rough patch — and boy, did they hit a lot of ’em — Case would worry about her job security. But “actors think that [they’re getting cut] every single day, no matter what happens. Like, somebody breaks a nail, and you think, ‘That’s it, I’m getting fired!’” she admits. “You’re always just hoping for the best. My viewpoint was to just do my best at all times, then no matter what happens, you don’t have any regrets. You can’t have any!”

At this point, Case has nothing but gratitude, not only for her job but for the endless opportunities that is has afforded her to evolve her craft. “I’ve really grown as an actress from playing Sharon for so long and playing so many different sides to her,” she observes. “I couldn’t say I always felt this way throughout the years, but I do now feel like I could play anything. I wouldn’t have said that before.

“I thought, ‘Well, you know, every actor has their sort of sphere, their genre that they can play in, and that’s what they’re capable of doing,’” she continues. “But I don’t really think that of myself anymore. I think I could play anything, because I’ve seen myself push and push my performance or stretch into places where I’m like, ‘Wow, I never imagined… !’ So, I mean, if I could do that, I started thinking, ‘What can’t I do?’”