The Young and the Restless Names Jamey Giddens and Dan O’Connor as Head Writers
The Young and the Restless has been searching for a new head writer since Josh Griffith stepped down in June just a short time after relinquishing his duties as executive producer. Y&R has now found his successors in Jamey Giddens and Dan O’Connor, who will share head-writing duties.
Jamey Giddens and Dan O’Connor Named Y&R Head Writers
The news of Giddens and O’Connor’s hiring was first confirmed by TV Insider.
Both Giddens and O’Connor are established presences in the daytime world. An avid soap fan, Giddens became the co-owner of Daytime Confidential in 2007 and both wrote and podcasted about daytime dramas for the site. He then created the primetime drama Ambitions, which ran on OWN from 2019-2020.
From there, Giddens was a member of the Days of Our Lives writing team, serving as a breakdown writer from 2020-2025 and winning both Writers Guild of America and Daytime Emmy Awards for his work. He also worked on DAYS’s streaming spinoff, Days of Our Lives: Beyond Salem.
He left DAYS in 2025 to become a breakdown writer on Beyond the Gates. He is currently nominated for two Daytime Emmys, one as part of DAYS’s writing team and one as part of BTG’s.
O’Connor began his career in soaps at One Life to Live as a writers’ assistant, then a continuity script supervisor, then a script writer. When OLTL was canceled in 2012, he joined the writing team of General Hospital, and in 2019, he was named GH’s co-head writer alongside Chris Van Etten. He served in that role until 2024.
O’Connor won both a Daytime Emmy and a Writers Guild Award for his work on GH.
According to TV Insider, the cast and crew at Y&R have been informed of the head-writing change, and Giddens and O’Connor will officially start their new jobs next week.
Griffith had served as Y&R’s head writer since 2019, as executive producer from 2023-2025, when Sally McDonald joined him as co-executive producer. McDonald has been the solo executive producer since earlier this year, when Griffith decided to step down to focus on his writing duties. He has yet to comment on his decision to exit the show.
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Soap Opera Digest does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.