CHRISTINE BARTOLUCCI/ABC
Admit One: Nina (Cynthia Watros) prepares to make a life-altering confession to Sonny.
After Nina confesses her SEC-related secret to what she thinks is a priest, she gets a most unpleasant surprise: Cyrus reveals that he was the one she spilled her guts to.
Nina’s New Year’s Eve begins on a high note, as she and Sonny make plans to meet up at The Savoy to ring in 2024 together. But in the back of her mind, according to Cynthia Watros (Nina), “I think she feels the walls closing in, because Michael, of course, knows and is blackmailing her. Now Ned knows and is trying to blackmail her. So she feels like the truth is going to have to come out. She’s not thinking that New Year’s Eve is going to 100 percent go her way.”
Still, she is majorly caught off-guard when Cyrus shows up at her office and drops the bombshell that the person she confessed to was him and not a real priest. Notes Watros, “She went with a full heart into the confessional and just let the priest know everything she has done in the past year, hiding the truth about the SEC, and she calls herself out on being a coward and a liar and she doesn’t know what to do because she’s so afraid of losing everything — her marriage, her family, everything she’s ever wanted in her life. It’s a really tender, vulnerable time and she thinks she’s pouring her heart out to God and this priest. And to find out it was Cyrus?! At first, she doesn’t believe it. And then he says a couple of things that only the ‘priest’ would know.”
Understandably, “Nina is angry, because how could he do this? She’s almost indignant, like, ‘What do you want now?’ Because she has all these men coming to her, blackmailing her, wanting things. So what does Cyrus want now? I mean, stand in line, Cyrus, because there are a lot of men wanting stuff from Nina [laughs]! And he just blabbers on about wanting Nina to be right with God and to tell the truth — but underneath it all, she doesn’t trust that he doesn’t have some sort of [self-serving] motive because he hates Sonny and he probably wants to destroy Sonny’s life, somehow, through me.”
Their conversation leads Nina to make the fateful decision to tell Sonny everything. “She’s thinking she’s going to go to Sonny on New Year’s Eve, right before midnight, and she’s gonna say, ‘I am the one who turned Carly and Drew into the SEC,’ ” Watros says. “She promised to be open and honest with him. She knows he will be angry that she did something to hurt the mother of his children, but [especially] that she hid the truth and didn’t tell him for such a long time.” Adds the actress, “Cynthia can understand why Nina did it, because she has such a fear around losing her family, losing her daughter. She would do anything not to lose that, even if it’s making mistakes by not telling the truth. She has such fear about losing her daughter and her husband, and ultimately, that may just blow up in her face.”
