Young And Restless Exclusive: Josh Griffith On Sharon, Nick, Phyllis, Ian And Jordan!

Young and Restless is coming off a week of epic drama that saw the returns of baddies Jordan Howard and Ian Ward, major shifts on the corporate front, Sharon’s confession to killing Heather, a car crash that left Phyllis’s life in the balance and more. Soap Opera Digest checked in with the show’s head writer/executive producer, Josh Griffith, for the inside scoop of what fans can expect next for the citizens of Genoa City.

Double Trouble

“It’s been fun,” the exec grins of unfurling the twist that Sharon did not, in fact, kill Heather; rather, Jordan and Ian had teamed up to plot against her. “We always knew going in that there was going to be another killer,” Griffith confides. “Sharon was not going to be a murderer. That that’s why we very carefully laid it out so that we did not see the actual murder and we had her wake up and find Heather’s body.”

As for the critical step of determining who did do it, “I knew that it needed to be somebody who not only we could come up with motive for the killing, but that also the reveal would be massive,” Griffith notes. “It wouldn’t just be, ‘Oh, who’s that?’ And I started looking into, historically, who had a beef with the Newmans. And. we landed on Ian Ward. And then I started thinking. I actually watched Strangers on a Train, the Hitchcock film, because I’m a Hitchcock fanatic. I hadn’t watched it in a while and I started thinking about the idea of crisscross, which is important in that movie: ‘You do my crime and I’ll do yours.’ And I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if Ian had an accomplice that equally needed something to happen because they were angry and they felt they’d been wronged?’ And I said, ‘Well, we’ve got Jordan in prison…’ In a nutshell, the idea is that these two wonderful villains — who both have reasons to want revenge in Genoa City — would find each other and team up. It seemed perfect and that this murder could be the catalyst for the whole thing. As we were putting the pressure on Sharon and we were slowly starting to reveal that things were not exactly as she thinks they are, at the perfect point, we would then reveal to the audience these two mastermind criminals. ‘They must be behind it. They must have something to do with it!’ ”

Eagle-eyed viewers had noticed from the start that Sharon had no conscious memory of committing murder — and Griffith says that was by design. “As I was crafting it, I said, ‘I’m hoping they’re gonna say, ‘Wait a minute, something’s off here! She woke up and found the body.’ So that [fans] keyed in to that, I was delighted.”

Griffith was also delighted at the prospect of seeing the actors who portray Ian and Jordan, Ray Wise and Colleen Zenk, tearing up the scenery together. “I said, ‘These two are gonna be just absolutely delicious together!’ And the ramifications throughout Genoa City as we slowly reveal [their plans], it is just going to be a powder keg of excitement.”

While Sharon may be off the hook for murder, her hands aren’t exactly squeaky clean, as she has worked to pin “her” crime on Daniel. Assures Griffith, “I knew that was going to be a tricky move to play, but once other levels of what’s happened to her and what Ian and Jordan have set in motion come to light, fans can be able to breathe another sigh of relief.”

To preserve the secret, Y&R’s creative team took extra precautions to make sure the villains’ returns didn’t leak before they were shown on air. “We were very careful that the [characters’] names didn’t appear in scripts or in any kind of [internal] documents,” he reports. “But this is a team that understands the importance of [keeping the secret under wraps],” he notes. “Our team knew, ‘We’ve got to sit on this because the reveal is going to be too great. We’ve got a good group here that knows how to keep a secret.”

It took little coaxing to get Zenk and Wise on board with making comebacks. “Colleen was just waiting for [the call],” he says. “It’s been so recent [since she was last on] and she was like, ‘When can I come back? When can I come back?’ And when I told her, she was very excited.” Making the overture to Wise marked Griffith’s first interaction with the actor. “I hadn’t met Ray, because I wasn’t here the last times that he was here playing Ian,” he explains. “And it was such a thrill for me to meet him, because this is Leland Palmer from Twin Peaks! So, I got him to tell me all kinds of David Lynch [the legendary co-creator and co-executive producer of Twin Peaks and celebrated film director] stories and it was a great meeting. And then I told him what I was planning and he was delighted.”

Innocent Act?

On Friday’s episode, Sharon — distraught and panicked, thinking that she was responsible for Phyllis’s car wreck — confessed to Nick that she killed Heather. Why was it time for her to confide in someone with an actual pulse, and not only discuss her misdeeds with a hallucinated version of Cameron? Says Griffith of Sharon’s fragile state of mind, “She’s been holding it together, holding it together — but then every time she thinks she’s in the clear, something else happens. Now, she’s worried that maybe she ran Phyllis off the road and it’s just gotten to a point where she can’t keep it in anymore. And she knows the one person who is going to understand what she’s gone through has got to be Nick. And,” he adds, “it was very important for me that in the moment where she is now confessing, we are also revealing to the audience, ‘Okay, there’s another level to this and she may be confessing, but we know that she didn’t do it.”

The Sharon/Phyllis rivalry has been revving back up as Phyllis seeks to prove that Sharon is the reason her son, Daniel, stands accused of killing Heather. Making Nick and Phyllis integral to the next arc of Sharon’s story was a top priority for Griffith as he laid out how the plot is going to unfold. “The whole genesis of this charts back to the night Cassie died, and that loss of Cassie is what propelled Nick and Phyllis to have an affair,” he reminds. “It all goes back to that moment, and there was no question that they had to be key players in this next arc. Them and Daniel.”

And to hear Griffith tell it, even a massive car crash isn’t going to keep Phyllis from trying to save her son. “We’ve now gotten to a point where, in Phyllis’s mind, Sharon has tried to ruin Daniel’s life, and now it’s come all the way to her [being targeted], ‘to the point where she’s even tried to kill me.’ So Phyllis is just going to be a firebrand of anger and desire to see Sharon pay — until,” he hints, “something throws another wrench into that. Get ready! I’ve got a couple more wrenches to throw.”

As for Nick, he can’t quite bring himself to believe that Sharon is actually capable of having offed Heather. “I think that he knows that something is off with her; he knows something is wrong,” Griffith assesses, “But in his gut, he can sense — because of their history and their connection — that it’s not of her doing. [He senses that] there’s something, there’s an outside force, because there’s no way — even in her darkest periods of psychological trauma — does he believe that she would go to this place.” He adds, “Nick’s suspicion is the right suspicion. He’s the only one who really has the true, right instinct as to what’s going on, because their connection is that strong.”

But is that connection the result of their years of history, or could it speak to a possibly romantic rekindling for Nick and Sharon? Teases Griffith, “I think it could possibly be all of the above.”

Danger Zone

Y&R audiences will learn more this week about the dastardly agenda that Jordan and Ian intend to carry out where Sharon is concerned. But should other Genoa City residents be watching their backs? Do the duo have other targets in their crosshairs? “It’s the entire Newman family,” declares Griffith. “They all need to watch their back. But I think Mariah and Claire, specifically….”