Exclusive: Meredith Baxter Joins The Young and the Restless

Hmmm...wonder if she'll have any family ties? TV Guide Magazine can exclusively confirm that TV icon Meredith Baxter is heading to daytime's No. 1 soap, The Young and the Restless. The juicy gig will have her character, Maureen, kicking back a few cocktails — make that lots of cocktails — with troubled socialite Nikki Newman (Melody Thomas Scott).

According to a rep for the CBS soap, Maureen is a "charming, intelligent, middle-class woman who has always aspired to a more privileged life than she's had. She appears kind and sympathetic, but can be quite manipulative. She is skilled at getting people to do the things she wants them to do by making them think it's their idea!" Adds the rep: "When not hitting the sauce with her new drinking-buddy, Nikki, Maureen will be crossing with several key players on the Y&R canvas."

A member of sitcom royalty, Baxter starred from 1982 to 1989 as mom Elyse Keaton on Family Ties. She earned two Emmy nods in the landmark '70s series Family, and a third for the 1992 movie A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story. She took home a Daytime Emmy for the 1993 CBS Schoolbreak Special Other Mothers. Baxter's most recent TV appearances include Family Guy, Switched at Birth, The Neighbors, Glee and Finding Carter. Oh, and if you haven't read her terrific 2011 memoir Untied, do.

Baxter will hit Y&R on Monday, Sept. 8 and will be prominent throughout the fall because, word is, boozy Maureen has connections in town!

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