Rebecca Harper

Rebecca Harper is a fictional character on the drama series "Brothers & Sisters" and is played by actress Emily VanCamp. Infobox character | name = Rebecca Harper


caption = Emily VanCamp as Rebecca Harper
real_name = Rebecca Harper
portrayer = Emily VanCamp
creator = Jon Robin Baitz
species =
gender = Female
first = "Love is Difficult"
last =
last_cause =
age = 22
born = April 1986
occupation =
title =
alias =
family = Holly Harper (mother)
David Caplan (father)
spouse =
children =
relatives =
footnotes =

Character history

Background

Rebecca was thought to have been the daughter of William Walker, the late patriarch of the Walker family, and his longtime mistress Holly Harper, although it was later revealed that she was not William Walker's daughter. When Rebecca was 16, one of her teachers initiated an affair with her, which continued until his wife found out. Many people told the Harpers to press charges, but Rebecca begged her mother not to. The man and his family moved to Chicago. When he called Rebecca to apologize, the affair started again, and she moved there to be with him. When his wife found out again, he killed himself. She told everyone that she was studying theatre at Northwestern University, and that she subsequently dropped out of school and returned home.

eason 1

The Walker family first learned of Rebecca's existence while attempting to crack the password to a locked account which contained funds that William Walker had embezzled from Ojai Foods. Holly initially denied that Rebecca was William's daughter, revealing the truth only after the account was unlocked with the password "S-K-T-K-J-R" (the initials of the five Walker children, plus R for Rebecca.) Sarah, Tommy and Kevin, the three Walker siblings involved in the family business, initially agreed to keep Rebecca's existence a secret from the rest of the Walker family, although Saul eventually told Nora about Rebecca.

Rebecca knew William Walker only as her mother's boyfriend, not as a father. Holly insisted that Rebecca's father was not William, but a struggling film director she had dated before she knew William. However, after Sarah informed Rebecca of her parentage and confronted Holly with the fact that there was an extra R in the computer password, Holly broke down and said she had lied so that William would not leave his established family.

Justin was the first Walker sibling to reach out to Rebecca, after meeting her and discovering that they had high school friends in common. Rebecca and Justin attended a party together, at which Rebecca used drugs and Justin got into a fistfight trying to protect her. In another conversation, Rebecca told Justin that "there's a new black sheep in town, get used to it".

The rest of the Walkers were more reluctant to meet her, although they slowly made sincere attempts to reach out to her. Nora invited Rebecca to a family dinner, at which Kevin pulled out a strand of her hair to test her DNA. Horrified, Rebecca left the house quickly, although she later confided to her mother that although the Walkers struck her as crazy, she had always secretly "wanted" to be part of a large, crazy, dysfunctional but loving family.

Sarah, Tommy and Kevin subsequently extended social invitations to Rebecca, who agreed to meet them all at once to talk at the Walker home. Kitty, who had been the most reluctant of the siblings to meet Rebecca, came home unaware that Rebecca was in the house.

Rebecca was subsequently invited to the Walker family game night, where she largely felt like an outsider. She bonded with Joe, Sarah's husband, over a shared love of music, and accepted his offer of guitar lessons. She gave the wrong answer to the final question in a trivia game, incorrectly identifying Juliet's (of "Romeo and Juliet") surname as Montague.

At her first guitar lesson, Rebecca and Joe kissed. When she later told Justin, Rebecca reported that Joe had initiated the kiss, but did not reveal that she had been flirting quite openly with him and attempted to prolong the kiss after Joe backed away. Holly used the situation as an opportunity to get revenge on Sarah for revealing Rebecca's paternity, only later revealing that she did "not", in fact, believe that Rebecca was a wholly innocent party to the situation. Rebecca and Holly subsequently got into a fight, and Rebecca moved into Nora's house.

Holly subsequently warned Nora that Rebecca was not trustworthy, a criticism which Rebecca dismissed as motivated by her mother's anger and jealousy rather than fact.

eason 2

In the early part of Season 2, Rebecca was still in the process of working out her place in the Walker family. She sometimes avoided expressing her own opinions on things for fear of alienating her new siblings, but as she began to feel more accepted by the Walkers she began to feel more confident, finally speaking up while shopping with her sisters for bridesmaid dresses for Kitty's wedding. She also arranged a job for her friend Lena as the office manager at Walker Landing, the winery business that Holly operated in partnership with Tommy Walker, but this ultimately resulted in Lena sleeping with both Tommy and Justin.

However, things began to change when a former boyfriend of Holly's, a film director and photographer named David Caplan, unexpectedly arrived for a visit. With some guidance from David, Rebecca began exploring her own interest in photography as well. However, after a series of events caused Rebecca to begin doubting what she knew about her paternity, she took a DNA test which revealed that David, not William Walker, was actually her father. She initially confronted David, who reassured her that he did not previously know she was his daughter — and would not have been a stable or reliable father for her if he had known. She did not immediately tell the Walkers that she was not related to them, but kept the test results to herself until after Justin revealed that the possibility of not being related to her after all had left him confronting the realization that he had some romantic feelings for her. She then confronted Holly, who called Rebecca ungrateful for all the sacrifices Holly had made for her and threw her out of the house. The Walkers subsequently learned that the R in the computer password had never stood for Rebecca at all, but for Ryan, a child William had with yet another mistress.

In the final episode of the season, Justin and Rebecca acknowledged that they had feelings for each other, and began to discuss the possibility of entering a relationship.

Casting

Roxy Olin, Patricia Wettig's real-life daughter, auditioned for the role of Rebecca. She was later cast in the smaller role of Michelle, Chad Barry's girlfriend.

External links

* [http://www.abcmedianet.com/showpage/showpage.html?program_id=CB2214&type=lead Press release for Brothers & Sisters]