Christel Khalil: Young & Restless Scrapped ‘Love Match’ to Make Holden & Lily Siblings (Excl)
Lily just learned that she has a half sibling in Holden (Nathan Owens) on The Young and the Restless, changing the landscape of the Winters family forever. Soap Opera Digest chatted with Lily’s portrayer, Christel Khalil, about the big reveal, what it means for Lily and Holden moving forward, and how the twist changed the show’s plans for a Lily/Holden romance.
The More The Merrier
Khalil says that she was thrilled to learn about the new branch of Lily’s family tree. “It’s so great to see the Winters family expanding and getting more people because, you know, we’re so lonely, our little island of three,” she says, referring to Lily, her adopted brother Devon (Bryton James) and maternal cousin Nate (Sean Dominic). “It was really exciting to come back from my maternity leave” — the actress gave birth to her third child earlier this year — “and just be thrust into this really fun, great story.”
Especially because she’s such a fan of the actor who plays Holden. “I love Nathan so much and it’s so fun to work with him,” she enthuses. “To have it be Nathan, it couldn’t have been any better.”
While Lily and Holden sharing DNA opens up new possibilities, it does shut the door to a potential Holden/Lily romance. Many viewers had seen on-screen sparks between Khalil and Owens and assumed Y&R was setting them up for a love story — and Khalil confirms that the show did originally intend to pair the two characters. “That was actually going to happen,” she nods. “They were going to play the story that we were going to have a little love match before my maternity leave, actually. We were gonna do this whole little side storyline — and then that’s when Josh [Griffith, executive producer/head writer] got the idea of, like, ‘Oh, my God, they should be siblings!’ And then they were like, ‘Wait, wait, wait — did we ever have them kiss?’ And then they were like, ‘Oh, no. Thank God! We didn’t have them kiss!’ So, they ended up making us siblings, which I think is way more interesting.”
Learning that they share a father won’t necessarily put Holden and Lily on a fast track to family harmony. As the two characters process the news, “It’s very awkward at first,” Khalil previews. “They’re not really sure how to act around each other, because it’s like, ‘Okay… What do I do?’ The only interactions they had before were very tense and very accusatory of each other, and so now it’s like, ‘Uh, okay, I guess I have to kind of be nice to you?’ But then I think you start to see them on the journey of, ‘Oh, wow, you’re actually a good person. Maybe I judged you too harshly and I’m seeing a different side of you.’ They kind of start coming together and really developing a little friendship, which is really fun to see. I think the journey of this is really interesting.”
As for Lily’s dynamic with her other brother, Devon, their relationship has been a bit rocky in the wake of his discovery that Lily colluded with Victor (Eric Braeden) to fake her own kidnapping. “Devon will always be kind of like, ‘Judge first, accept later,'” muses Khalil, who adds that Lily “does feel bad about the kidnapping thing. She’s continuing to [apologize]: ‘I’m so sorry, I should have said something.’ So there’s going to be some tension there for a while, too, I think.”
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