Meredith Baxter Joins 'The Young and the Restless'

Meredith Baxter is joining the cast of CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless, according to TVGuide.com. She will play Maureen, "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! When not hitting the sauce with her new drinking-buddy, Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott), Maureen will be crossing with several key players on the Y&R canvas."

Will Maureen turn out to be Kelly (Cady McClain) and Stitch's (Sean Carrigan) mother?

Baxter is best known for playing Elyse Keaton in NBC comedy Family Ties and Nancy Lawrence Maitland in the ABC drama Family, a role which earned her two Primetime Emmy nominations.

Baxter will make her first Y&R appearance on September 8.

Sada Thompson, Actress Known for Maternal Roles, Dies at 83

Sada Thompson, a Tony- and Emmy-winning actress known for her portrayals of archetypal mothers, from the loving family caretaker and the world-weary, had-it-with-the-kids older woman to the brutalizing harridan and mythical adulteress and murderess, died Wednesday in Danbury, Conn. She was 83.

The cause was lung disease, said her daughter, Liza Sguaglia.

From 1976 to 1980 she starred as Kate Lawrence, the matriarch of an upper-middle-class family in ABC drama FAMILY. FAMILY dealt straightforwardly with issues like the marital problems of the Lawrences’ eldest daughter (played at the time by Meredith Baxter Birney); the discovery by the teenage son (Gary Frank) that his long-time best friend was gay; and the distress of the youngest daughter (Kristy McNichol) on overhearing her mother saying that she sometimes wished she hadn’t had her.

Thompson was nominated for an Emmy four times in the show’s five seasons, winning in 1978.