Carly Tenney

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Maura West as Carly Tenney.

Carly Tenney is a fictional character on the soap As The World Turns. She has been played since the character's introduction in 1995 by Maura West. When she first arrived in Oakdale, Carly was a schemer who attempted to break up her wealthy half-sister, Rosanna's engagement. Rosanna responded by promising Carly $50 million if she was married (to someone other than Rosanna's fiance Mike), and had a baby by whomever she was married to by year's end (1998). This resulted in Carly's first marrying and divorcing Dr. John Dixon and then Detective Hal Monson and, with the help of her scheming cousin Molly Conlon, switching the paternity results of the baby she was carrying (who turned out to be Hal's). Eventually when the truth was revealed, Carly lost the $50 million, as well as the respect of nearly everyone in Oakdale, effectively becoming the town pariah; she also lost (or so it seemed at the time) any chance she might have had with the one man she truly loved, Jack Snyder.

An aspiring fashion designer, Carly had initially attempted to team up with Lisa Grimaldi to start Get Real Fashions, but the venture proved disastrous, and indirectly resulted in Carly and Lisa both becoming deeply involved with very dangerous men in Hong Kong (Carly with the obsessed, much older Winston Lowe, who forced her to marry him and then held her captive, and Lisa with shady Martin Chedwyn, who also forced her to marry him, as part of a scheme to smuggle assets out of Hong Kong before the changeover in government). The experience ended Lisa's friendship with Carly, and also led to Carly's being further ostracized. Since that time, Carly has not really been able to get her fashion career off the ground, thought at a couple of points things did briefly seem promising, but her involvement with rogueish Craig Montgomery undermined what would otherwise have been a career breakthrough in 2002.

Around this same time, vindictive Barbara Ryan and her husband James Stenbeck had Carly and two other women (Emily Stewart and Rose D'Angelo) kidnapped and carted off to a "spa" in a remote region of Europe, where they were held captive and forced to be research subjects in a deranged scientist's experiments in manipulating the aging process. The women were eventually rescued by Jack, Hal and Paul Ryan (Barbara's son).

Carly finally married Jack Snyder in 2002, though, it was a stormy relationship. In a moment of drunken abandomnent, she slept with her ex, Mike Kasnoff, the night before their wedding, which later caused considerable drama for Carly and Jack, as well as for Mike and Carly's cousin Molly (who was seeing Mike at that point). Though they survived that ordeal, they also had to contend with Jack's obsessed, psychotic ex-wife, Julia Lindsay, who was institutionalized, but later escaped and attempted to kill Jack (after attempting to become pregnant by him).

In 2004, Carly's sister Rosanna, who she had finally forgiven and formed a sisterly bond with, after having fought bitterly with one another for most of their lives, was involved in an accident which put her into a coma (from which she still has not emerged). At the time of the accident, Rosanna had been attempting to adopt the illegitimate baby of teenager Gwen Norbeck. Carly and Jack decided to take the baby and raise him until such time as Rosanna could emerge from her coma and take him. In the meant time, however, Gwen had decided that she wanted her biological baby back, and Carly and Gwen spent the next several months battling fiercely over the baby, with Carly drugging Gwen (cleverly arranging so that town matriarch Nancy Hughes would witness the events) to make her look like an unfit mother; the scheme backfired, and Gwen was awarded custody, but not before it could be revealed that Carly and Gwen were in fact half-sisters (they shared the same father, Ray Tenney). It was later revealed, however, that the baby thought to be Gwen's was actually the child of Craig Montgomery and Jennifer Munson, who Craig had switched at birth; Gwen's baby, Billy, had in fact died shortly after birth. This trauma brought Carly and Gwen closer, where they were were able to put the bitterness and animosity of the custody battle behind them and love one another as sisters.

The strain of the sisters' custody fight took its toll on Carly's relationship with Jack, however. In an uncharacteristically shady move, Jack buried evidence that would have implicated Carly as having drugged Gwen, and when this was found out, Jack was suspended from the police force. Carly tried to help Jack win his job back through a ill-conceived, convoluted scheme, but it only exacerbated the problem, and eventually the marriage collapsed. They divorced in early 2006, and though each of them indicated at various points that they regretted splitting, they have not reunited. In the fall of 2006 Carly began a professional relationship with Australian bad boy, Simon Frasier, which soon evolved into an affair. This has put her at odds with her friend (and Simon's ex) Katie Peretti, and Katie's husband (and Carly's ex) Mike Kasnoff.