Y&R Showrunner Josh Griffith Talks Eve Inspiration and Nikki's Next Steps
Josh Griffith
Francis Specker/CBS
The Young and the Restless head writer and EP Josh Griffith went back a few decades for the show's latest storyline. He resurrected Victoria Newman's (Amelia Heinle) baby Eve, now grown and messed up, in the form of sinister assistant Claire Grace (Hayley Erin). Griffith delved into the storyline inspiration and teased what's next for the Newmans with Soap Opera Digest.
Griffith said he took inspiration from a movie called Sorry, Wrong Number, where a character is isolated and things go wrong, but they can't fix it. He wanted Melody Thomas Scott (Nikki Newman) to be at the forefront of the storyline. When asking who might have a bone to pick with the Newmans, Griffith mused:
I talked to Elizabeth [Le Brun], who’s our producer and does all of the tracking of the history of the show and asked who from Nikki and Victor’s [Eric Braeden] past could potentially have a grudge they would want to accomplish now. And she said, ‘Well, it would be Eve Howard [Margaret Mason], but unfortunately, we saw her die on air, so that’s no good.’ I said, ‘Tell me a little more about it.’ We dug into it and I found out about the Cole [J. Eddie Peck] connection and then there was the baby that died, and then I started thinking, ‘Ah, a baby that died.’
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Then, he decided to flesh out the Howard family even further. He added:
As I got deeper into the story, I said, ‘Well, it’s kind of interesting if it’s a sister, it’s a woman, and what if she raised this child to believe she had been abandoned by the Newmans, and she had literally spent 26 years grooming a psychopath?’ I found that fascinating. I said, ‘But she’s got to be redeemable; the child has to be redeemable. She has to have been totally manipulated, but the aunt can be as bats***t crazy as we want!’ I said, ‘I want to go all out! I want [Jordan, Colleen Zenk] to be totally Silence–Of–The–Lambs crazy.'
The fallout from "Eve"'s resurrection is going to play out on screen. It's going to affect lots of members of the Newman clan, including Nikki, who was given alcohol in an IV drip and made to fall off the wagon. Griffith teased:
Mel has been knocking this out of the park. Nobody does alcoholic like Melody! She’s so real and heartbreaking when Nikki falls off the wagon. I knew Mel would be good, but she went so far beyond what I even imagined. Those scenes alone in the bedroom? I mean, just stunning. Just spectacular. And this story is far from over. Nikki has been forced to fall off the wagon by crazy people and her recovery is going to be equally spectacular.
