Rebecca Harper is a fictional character on the ABC television series Brothers & Sisters. She is portrayed by Emily VanCamp.
At the age of 16, she has an affair with one of her teachers in Chicago. The teacher commits suicide when his wife finds out about this, then she moves back home. In season 1, it is thought that she is the daughter of the late William Walker and his mistress Holly Harper, Rebecca's mother. This is because William Walker's fund account's password is "S-K-T-K-J-R", the first letter of his children's names. Holly Harper denies that he is the father. The Walker family is initially reluctant to meet her, but she is invited to a family dinner and trivia game. In season 2, she starts to feel more confident in her place in the Walker family and becomes more outspoken. Holly Harper's former boyfriend, David Caplan, a photographer, comes to visit. She starts exploring her interest in photography with him. However, she starts to doubt who her father is and gets a DNA test. According to the test, it is found out that David is the real biological father of Rebecca, something that he did not know. She tells the Walkers this after Justin, one of the Walker brothers, reveals that he has romantic feelings for her. The Walkers find out that the "R" in William Walker's password actually stands for Ryan, a child he had with another mistress. In season 3, Justin and Rebecca are in a relationship, but this is kept secret until Justin tells the rest of the family. At the end of the season, they're engaged. In season 4 she plans her wedding with Justin and becomes pregnant. She has a huge argument with Justin which ends with Justin telling her that he is unsure about everything. After he realizes how much he wants to be a husband and a father, he later goes to see an upset Rebecca and tells her he still wants to get married. Rebecca has a miscarriage. Rebecca and Justin spend their honeymoon in the Ojai Ranch. In season 5, a year has passed since the last season, and Rebecca moves out of the home she shared with Justin. Justin and Rebecca divorced while he was in the Afghanistan. They still have feelings for each other. Rebecca gets offered to be a photographer in New York and any relationship between her and Justin gets ended after she leaves to New York.
Character history
Background
Rebecca was thought to have been the daughter of William Walker (Tom Skerritt), the late patriarch of the Walker family, and his longtime mistress Holly Harper (Patricia Wettig), 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 theater at Northwestern University, and had dropped out of school and returned home.
Season 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 (Rachel Griffiths), Tommy (Balthazar Getty) and Kevin (Matthew Rhys), 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 the 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 tried to reach Rebecca via a phone hook-up.
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 & I'm ready to move to a new city".