Carmen Mesta

Carmen Mesta is a fictional character in the CBS soap opera "The Young and the Restless". Marisa Ramirez played the role from June to October 2006.

Character

Carmen was a freelance public relations consultant that Katherine Chancellor hired for Jabot Cosmetics because of Jack Abbott's (Peter Bergman) handling of the scandal that resulted from Jabot's test release of tainted face cream (tainted by Gloria Fisher (Judith Chapman), whose involvement is still unknown to everyone at Jabot to this day). Jack resented her involvement but soon became attracted to her and eventually he and Carmen had a one-night stand. Afterward, Carmen was eventually hired by Victor Newman (Eric Braeden) (Jack's longtime rival) for Newman Enterprises' cosmetics division, "Beauty Of Nature".

While at Newman Enterprises, Carmen met Neil Winters (Kristoff St. John), who was estranged from his wife Drucilla (Victoria Rowell) after learning that it was not himself but his brother Malcolm who was the true biological father of his daughter Lily (Christel Khalil), after Dru had a one-night stand with Malcolm. Neil became attracted to Carmen and they became close, even having a kiss once, but they never had a sexual relationship. Believing that the two were having an affair and that it was Carmen who was pursuing Neil (when in fact Carmen had rather ambiguous feelings towards his advances--she did not encourage nor discourage Neil), Drucilla became enraged at Carmen, becoming drunk and ransacking Carmen's room and cutting her clothing with scissors. Carmen was so shaken by this attack that she had Drucilla arrested for aggravated burglary and proceeded to get a restraining order to protect herself from Dru. However, Dru proceeded to violate the restraining order on more than one occasion, even attacking Carmen in Newman Enterprises' break room. Unbeknownst to Dru, the attack was captured on a hidden video camera accidentally left on by Noah Newman (Hunter Allan), and the footage was discovered by Dru's enemy Phyllis Newman (Michelle Stafford), who alerted Carmen, who in turn took the tape to the police, which landed Dru in more trouble.

During these events Neil had been helping Dru deal with her feelings towards Carmen and tried to act as peacemaker, but Carmen told Neil that she couldn't understand why he couldn't condemn Dru's actions, and told him that she was going to ask the District Attorney William Bardwell (Ted Shackelford) to prosecute Dru. Neil then believed, as did Dru's family, that Carmen was--in their eyes--becoming overzealous in wanting revenge on Drucilla.

Dru hired Michael Baldwin (Christian LeBlanc) as her attorney, and Michael asked Paul Williams (Doug Davidson) to investigate Carmen's background. Paul discovered that at Carmen's previous job (prior to her arrival in Genoa City) she had an affair with a married executive, and that she left the job after being paid a large settlement. Michael confronted Carmen with this information in an attempt to get her to drop her lawsuit against Dru, but she refused.

Jack also had been working at Newman after leaving Jabot because of his part in the scandal (see above), due to Victor's apparent generosity. After buying the NVP project started by Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott) and Phyllis, Jack then attempted to secretly buy back Jabot after being banned from the company. He succeeded on the second try through a company called the House of Kim. After meeting with Carmen, Jack accidentally picked up Carmen's cell phone, while Carmen took Jack's. The supposed head of House of Kim, Ji Min Kim (Eric Steinberg) called Jack's phone and Carmen discovered Jack's ruse. She promised Jack that she would not tell anyone of his deception in buying back Jabot and he believed her, but he had internal doubts.

After continually being harassed by Dru, Neil, Lily and Devon (Bryton), Carmen disappeared for a few days and had everyone demanding her return, including an impatient Jack.

Unfortunately, Carmen was soon found dead behind Neil's jazz club Indigo. Neil had just opened it up for business and, on a note of irony, had been encouraged by Carmen to open up the club. Will Bardwell--who knows nothing about Carmen's past--has since determined that she was murdered and, out of numerous possible suspects, has arrested Devon for her murder. Michael Baldwin has become Devon's defense attorney and has begun to look for other plausible suspects, particularly Brad Carlton (Don Diamont) and Jack Abbott, so that he can establish reasonable doubt as part of Devon's defense.

While holding them in a refrigerator (which she later set on fire), Jana Hawkes (Emily O'Brien) confessed to killing Carmen to Kevin Fisher (Greg Rikaart) and Colleen Carlton (Adrianne Leon). Jana killed Carmen because Carmen saw Jana looking through a folder containing pictures and facts about the Grudgeon Reliquary (a fictional piece of medieval art with foreign letters engraved on it, revealed to be the keys to a massive fortune), which Jana stole from Victoria Newman's car. (Colleen pointed out that the folder contained no valuable information, to which Jana responded with "I didn't know that at the time".) Jana then beat Carmen on the back of the head with a lead pipe, killing her.