Young and Restless’s Mishael Morgan Teases ‘A Lot Of Drama’ Ahead For Cane And Amanda (EXCL)

When Mishael Morgan made the decision to take what she called “a bit of a step back” from her role of Amanda on Young and Restless in 2022 and move from contract to recurring status, she also made it clear that she was open to coming back to the soap in the future. The Daytime Emmy-winning actress was true to her word, popping in for brief visits in the years that followed. However, her current run — which pivots around Amanda’s connection to Aristotle Dumas, who was recently revealed to be Cane Ashby — is for a much more substantial storyline, and unlike her most recent comebacks, Morgan will be sticking around for far more than a handful of episodes. The star spoke to Soap Opera Digest about the new plot, working with Billy Flynn (Cane) and more.

Back in Business

“I was fortunate enough that Y&R, they didn’t just say they just wanted a couple episodes,” Morgan begins. “We sat down and we talked about making this a nice little story arc for Amanda, and we’ve been having conversations about the fact that I really am recurring, and I’m very open to doing some of these story arcs. So we’ll see if there might be more in the future. But this has been a really fun one to play out and… we’ll see how long it goes for.”

Both Genoa City and viewers were buzzing about the reclusive business tycoon Aristotle Dumas for months before he finally revealed his true identity. And to hear Morgan tell it, the actors on Y&R were equally in the dark. “I don’t know if anybody knows this, but [Head Writer and Executive Producer] Josh Griffith, he keeps his cards very close to his chest,” she explains. “He is very much a believer that in life, we don’t know what’s going to happen, so in your character’s life, you don’t know what’s going to happen. So I didn’t know much about what was going to happen or what was happening in other people’s storylines until we got the script [of the Cane reveal] pretty much a week or five days before [we filmed it].”

Upon her return to the soap, Morgan only knew that Amanda was working for a mysterious businessman. “Just like all the fans, we’re all in the same boat as actors on the set, and we all have our theories,” she shares with a chuckle. “So a lot of theories were going around the set, talking about, ‘Oh, who do we think it’s going to be?’ And there were whispers about this possible Cane scenario. There were so many different whispers around set, but nobody had a definitive answer until we got those scripts. And those scripts were kept, I think, under lock and key until right before they were released to us.”

Can You Keep a Secret?

Of course, once those scenes where Cane revealed himself to his invited guests at his home in France began shooting, the actors then had to keep quiet about it themselves so as not to spoil it for the fans. “I’m pretty good at keeping secrets, but it’s really hard because you do interviews,” Morgan notes. “I had to do an interview out here in Toronto — I was on The Morning Show, and they were like, ‘What can you tell us?’ And I felt like we just started shooting those scenes, so I had information, and I just was like, ‘I can’t really tell you much, but there’s drama happening.’

“And it was really hard because those kind of direct questions, I want to be able to give an answer,” she continues, “but it does get really difficult because you want the fans to really enjoy the reveal. As much as we, as actors, enjoyed experiencing it and playing those storylines out, we want the fans to feel that as well. So it’s like, you want to give information so everybody watches, but that juggle is difficult for sure.”

Business Is Business

Now that the man Amanda is working for has been revealed as Cane Ashby, some are questioning exactly what their relationship is. “She’s his attorney, she’s his confidante,” Morgan shares. “She’s really his right-hand man — or woman — and I mean, that’s really all that we know right now.

“Me and Billy Flynn, we’ve sat down,” she adds, “we’ve talked a lot about creating our own backstory because not much was given to us, but we wanted these scenes to have weight and we wanted to show that they had history. So we kind of created our own kind of narrative that helped us build a connection that’s stronger than just what you see on camera.”

For the last several years of Daniel Goddard‘s 2007-19 run as Cane, Morgan was playing Hilary Curtis, a role she held from 2013-18. Upon the actress’s exit, Hilary passed away, and it was during the actor’s final month on the soap that Morgan returned as Hilary’s twin, Amanda. And while the characters did overlap briefly in Genoa City briefly, their real connection happened off-camera.

“There must have been something that happened that bonded us, because Amanda is a huge supporter of Cane and everything that he’s doing,” the actress muses. “She does question him, but they have this very open bond and this very direct way of communicating with each other that I don’t think that Cane has with a lot of other people in this situation. So we kind of built our own backstory [in which our characters] met, and he was going through a lot of stuff, and he helped me and he saved me in a certain way, and we just played around with it and tried to increase the stakes for both of us.”

What the Future Holds

Amanda has already made it clear to Cane that she does not approve of everything that he’s done to his former friends and relatives in Genoa City with his elaborate deception, which will continue to bring the employer and employee into conflict. “Amanda has a really strong moral compass, pretty much the exact opposite of Hilary,” Morgan says with a laugh. “And a lot of things that go on in Genoa City really muddy that for her. Amanda is well-versed in figuring out how to manage and maneuver people whose scruples might be a bit more skewed.”

Hints the actress, “There’s a lot of things that are coming that’s going to be really exciting because it really is going to push Amanda to a point of really reflecting on how much of a role she played to get to where they end up. So everybody has to keep watching, because the Cane reveal is not the end. There’s a lot of drama going on, and there’s a lot that we have in store that gets very interesting.”

Amanda’s role in Cane’s deception will definitely change people’s opinions of the attorney, and Morgan is looking forward to playing out every angle of the drama coming up. “I’m curious to see how this will change Amanda’s dynamic on the show because she’s always been squeaky clean,” she points out. “She’s always kind of made the right decisions. But now this is a little more of a complicated situation that she was put in because of Cane. So how she navigates that and navigates repairing some of these relationships is going to be interesting to watch and to play.”