The Young and the Restless Exclusive: Bryton James Dishes Devon’s Feuds With Lily & Mariah
Devon was relieved when his son, Dominic (Ethan Ray Clark), was brought home unharmed after the boy was abducted by Mariah (Camryn Grimes) on Young and Restless, but he was still worried about his sister, Lily (Christel Khalil), who was being held captive by Victor (Eric Braeden) in order to force Cane’s (Billy Flynn) hand. Now, Lily is back in Genoa City — but Devon’s relief quickly turned to anger when he discovered that she had been in on Victor’s scheme from the start and had kept him and Nate (Sean Dominic) in the dark. Soap Opera Digest checked in with Devon’s portrayer, Bryton James, about his reunion with Khalil, the tension between Devon and Lily, and the storm brewing between Devon and Mariah.
Peer Pleasure
James was delighted to have co-star Khalil back again after her maternity leave to welcome her third child. “Everybody [at the show] is like family, but Christel, obviously, is the closest one to me,” he says. “We met each other when we were, I think, nine and 10 years old,” when Khalil guest-starred on James’s ABC sitcom, Family Matters, “and then started working here. It’s been 22 years [at Y&R] for me, so that’s my 22-year-old sister right there in real and fake life!”
The actor considers Khalil to be his best friend and he’s the godfather to her oldest son, Michael Caden, so the longtime co-stars were in touch during her break. “[Because] we see and we talk to each other so often, it doesn’t feel like a lot of time has passed,” he shares of her return to the Y&R set. “It was back to work as usual. She had a lot of material when she came back, so we really hit the ground running. Her character became involved in a lot of different stories, so she had a lot of work to do.”
And he’s excited to tackle the new conflict between his character and hers. “Of course it was nice, personally, to know that she got to take some time off and have her new, beautiful baby,” James muses, “but having Lily in Devon’s orbit is always a pleasure.”
A Matter of Trust
Devon and Lily had a warm reunion — that is, until she confessed that she had willingly gone along with Victor’s fake kidnapping scheme. James explains, “He’s pretty baffled at a couple things, that Lily wouldn’t include her family in on this whole plot. Just because making your family believe that her life or the twins’ [Lily and Cane’s kids, Charlie and Mattie] lives are in danger is a pretty big deal, and I don’t think she’d want someone to do that to her. And it seems like she didn’t trust Devon or Nate enough to keep this secret and play along with everybody else.”
Although James insists that Devon and Lily’s bond is such that “there’s just about nothing that could completely damage their relationship,” he does allow that “the trust level gets skewed a little bit. And I imagine it’s gonna take some time to rebuild. It’s really a trust thing and respect for the feelings of the people that care about you and love you, and not putting them in a situation that you wouldn’t want them to put you in. So I think that’s gonna need to be repaired a little bit.”
The Y&R star suspects that Lily won’t have to do too much groveling to get back in Devon’s good books. “He’ll definitely forgive her,” he predicts. “He just won’t forget. Devon definitely doesn’t forget things. But, I mean, that’s his family. That’s his forever. Lily is tethered to all the love he’s ever felt in his life. That will never break.”
James adds that he enjoys having the siblings at odds with each other, even if it’s only for a little while, “because as an actor, you want to play the thing that you aren’t in real life,” he explains. “You want to play the thing that you don’t get to do most of the time in real life. So any time Devon’s at odds with anybody, really, I enjoy playing that more than the opposite. In real life, I’m not at odds with anybody. I never really have any conflict and confrontations or get to yell at people or do any stuff like that, so as an actor, I always enjoy doing what I don’t get to do often.”
Paying the Price
There is also another potential conflict brewing for Devon as he and his wife, Abby (Melissa Ordway), are poised to get word of the judge’s ruling on the punishment Mariah will receive for kidnapping Dominic. And when it comes to justice, James asserts that for Devon, “the only thing really on the table is jail time. He doesn’t want Mariah to suffer, but he does want something uncomfortable.”
Which is why he won’t be satisfied when he finds out that Mariah took a plea deal that allows her to undergo psychiatric treatment in lieu of doing time behind bars. “He views her going to a hospital as not even a slap on the wrist,” previews James, who adds that Devon fees like “it’s really easy to get to go to a cushy place and talk about your feelings and you’re taken care of and everything’s sunshine and rainbows until you get to go back home.”
Continues James, “He just wants there to be some kind of consequence that would make her think twice about doing it again, in case whatever drove her to do it in the first place doesn’t go away. For Devon, jail is really the only thing that [he would accept as] an alternative to the psych ward.”
While Devon will soon come to trust Lily again, it’s going to be quite some time before he can do the same with Mariah, even after she’s received psychiatric treatment for the mental health issues that caused her to kidnap Dominic. Sighs James, “He and Abby spent years with Mariah in their life. She’s Dominic’s godmother. And she’s been saying she’s fine or making it seem like she’s fine for years, and this happens. So Devon’s going to be extremely traumatized from that experience — and he wants justice.”
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