Mariah Kidnapping Dominic on The Young and the Restless: Camryn Grimes Says ‘It’s Just Wrong’ (Excl)
After months of portraying Mariah’s descent into madness on Young and Restless — aided and abetted by visions of Ian Ward (Ray Wise) — Camryn Grimes was as surprised as fans to learn that her alter ego was going to abduct Dominic (Ethan Ray Clark), the child she carried for Abby (Melissa Ordway) and Devon (Bryton James) as their surrogate. “I’m happy to see this story going somewhere and have it not be left as ambiguous,” the actress tells Soap Opera Digest. “I am always happy for the opportunity to play something that is a challenge, and I think this was definitely that, for me. We get so married to our characters and what we think is right for them and what we think they would do or not do, and sometimes it’s important to kind of let that go and just see what’s waiting on the other side as an actor.”
Drama 101
Asked how she thought fans were going to respond to this storyline twist of Mariah kidnapping Dominic, Grimes laughs and suggests, “Not well?” But she also believes that’s exactly how it should be. “I think people are going to feel very strongly one way or the other, and I don’t think it’s an issue to evoke that response from the audience. In fact, I think that means that they’re invested, and they’re invested in all of these characters and their happiness or their stories or their future.
“My own personal hope is that I was able to play it as accurately as I felt I could,” she continues. “So that even if you are in complete disagreement with what Mariah is doing and her actions, there’s some sort of empathy for where she’s at. Which is not a good place, you know?”
The Daytime Emmy winner also knows that these kinds of twists and turns are the lifeblood of a soap opera. “As much as everybody would like to, you can’t have all of your characters be happy and settled,” she notes. “That’s just not interesting. To continue this genre, you have to be constantly putting your characters through turmoil and strife and drama. I tip my hat to the writers who always have to figure out new ways to do that. And whether you agree or disagree with it, it continues the story, and it moves characters like chess pieces. Events unfold, and there are consequences and repercussions. That is always changing and evolving the canvas of these characters and their interactions with each other. And I think that’s important for a show to continue and a genre to be thriving.”
The Kids Are All Right
Finding herself working so closely with the new Dominic during this storyline gave Grimes flashbacks to when she first joined the soap as Cassie Newman back in 1997 at the tender young age of 7. I don’t know if people have picked up on the parallels,” she notes. “One of my first stories on Y&R was me being kidnapped by Grace [Jennifer Gareis]. So it’s kind of this full-circle moment, almost 30 years later, for my character, Mariah, to be doing that when that happened to Cassie. So I had a lot of like, full-circle feels about me being my age, working with a kid who is my age when I started.”
As a mom to her two-year-old son, Bridger, with husband Brock Powell, Grimes was naturally concerned that the emotional scenes weren’t too much for young Clark, but found herself impressed by her new co-star. “We were in a car together, and I was just emoting like a crazy person at him, and he was such a trooper,” she recalls. “It’s like, he’s a kid one second, and then you’re rolling, and he just knows exactly what he’s doing and he’s got all of his lines down. He’s very, very lovely, and super funny and sweet.”
As a former child star herself, Grimes has been protective of any of the young actors who have appeared on Y&R since she returned to the soap as Cassie’s twin, Mariah Copeland, in 2014. “I worked a lot with Alyvia Alyn Lind and McKenna Grace, who played Faith,” she explains. “They’re both enormously successful now. That makes me so happy because they were both so lovely and so, so, so talented. I feel a sort of kinship with child actors, in that I had such a lovely experience. I never want it to be anything but that.”
Given some of the reports of child stars who had very negative experiences on the sets of movies and television series, Grimes is grateful that her own life did not go down that path. “So I’m really, really protective, because I think it can be such a lovely space,” the actress explains. “It was like a sport for me. It was just sort of treated as this extra curricular, and it should be nothing but fun and lovely for a kid. So I’m always hyper-aware of that, and I want it to be a good time for the kid.”
On Her Own
The kidnapping storyline has only just kicked off, and with Mariah driving off to who-knows-where with little Dominic in tow, there’s plenty of drama and emotion yet to come. Grimes calls her alter ego’s actions “An act of desperation. She doesn’t see any other way out, as much as she tries to argue with herself. This pervasive and intrusive thought is winning, in the form of Ian. She’s isolated herself. She hasn’t been helped in the way that she needs to be helped, and she’s out on a line. This is the only answer that she can conceive of to bring her any sort of peace or happiness.”
With Mariah having come unmoored from the real world, she believes that she can take Dominic somewhere far away where they can live happily ever after as mother and son. “That’s her reality,” Grimes shares. “That’s as not complicated as it gets, but it, in fact, is deeply, deeply complicated and wrong. It’s just wrong. But to her, that’s not a plane that she’s operating on, right? Not all the cylinders are firing. Let’s be very, very clear.”
In this broken state of mind, not only does Mariah have no concept that what she’s doing is potentially dangerous, she actually believes that she can get away with it. “I think so, one hundred percent,” Grimes declares. “There’s a severe detachment there. She’s not only detached herself physically, she’s detached herself mentally. And not because she wants to. This is something that happened to her, and it sent her in this spiral. She’s making things extremely black and white, and not really, in the moment, understanding the ramifications of what this means. And if she does try to argue with herself about the cost of these decisions, she’s not winning. Her better self is not winning out.”
Conversation
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