Playing Favorites: Beyond the Gates’ Best Characters, Ranked

Beyond the Gates hasn’t even completed its first month on the air, never mind its first year, and yet we already have strong feelings about the sudstastic new soap’s cast of characters. Who’s the standout? Read on, and we’ll count down our 15 favorites.

From the moment we met Karan Kendrick’s no-nonsense alter ego, we knew that we were listening to the voice of reason — and suspected that no one on the show would be lending an ear. (They never do!)

As entitled as she is gorgeous, Colby Muhammad’s Dupree granddaughter is a portrait of millennial smugness. Wonder how she’ll hold up when she discovers that her picture-perfect life is out of focus?

RhonniRose Mantilla breathes not only life but fire into the powerhouse who’ll cut her two-timing dad zero slack. Forget “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” it’s “Hell hath no fury like a daughter ticked off!”

When Beyond the Gates needs a little comic relief, it gets real… or, rather, it gets Realtor. Lauren Buglioni’s passion’s plaything turns every property into a, ahem, hot spot.

He has our vote. Brandon Claybon’s would-be POTUS has it all: brains, looks, an intact moral compass and… Oh dear. A secret that’s keeping him tossing and turning? That could be a problem.

Clifton Davis rarely raises his voice as the patriarch of the Dupree family — and he doesn’t need to, either. When Vernon talks, people know damn well that they’d better listen — and do as he says!

The level-headed shrink that Daphnée Duplaix plays seems to have her [bleep] together. Which is only going to make it that much more fascinating when she loses her composure, and it all gets shot to hell.

A perfect mix of fire and ice, Tamara Tunie’s Dupree-family matriarch commands every room by simply entering it. Don’t let her genteel demeanor fool you, though; cross her, and you’ll regret it.

Ernestine Johnson’s gossipy nurse is a character that you’d never see on another show (though we wish you would): She’s a working stiff with a personality so vivid, she makes even exposition fun!

All attitude and anger, Ambyr Michelle’s cast-aside love child radiates vindictiveness. But she’s not so lost to her vendetta against her deadbeat dad that she isn’t suspicious of the character at No. 2.

Thanks to Sean Freeman’s libidinous photographer, we’re going to have to add a new playboy to our gallery of daytime’s most enthusiastic bed-hoppers. If you couldn’t tell, we are elated to do so!

Props to Timon Kyle Durrett: In any given episode, he makes us understand why Bill’s ex-wife would both want him… and want to smack the face off of his unfaithful face!

“The other woman” doesn’t usually garner a whole lotta sympathy. But Marquita Goings so beautifully fleshes out Hayley that it’s impossible to write her off as merely a social-climbing homewrecker.

A perfect villainess, Trisha Mann-Grant’s murderous Mommie Dearest is scary, funny and, best of all, unpredictable. Babydaddy Ted Richardson isn’t gonna know what hit him.

Karla Mosley’s wildcard ups the stakes in any and every scene. Will she make us feel for her or fear her, love her or loathe her? We can never guess, not until she’s drawn us all the way in.

Figure out how all the characters on Beyond the Gates are tied together in our handy Who’s Who gallery.