Young & Restless’ Melody Thomas Scott Shares Her Issues With the Nikki/Diane Storyline
Sometimes, it takes a little while to come around.
Nikki and Phyllis just can’t leave well enough alone when it comes to Diane on The Young and the Restless. Now, they’re about to start pushing Ashley to manipulating Tucker and, well, we don’t see this going the way they’re hoping.
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It’s funny, though, how much the Diane return saga has grown to pull in so many different characters, incorporate even more surprise returns and consume so much of the canvas. Because initially, if we’re being honest, her out-of-the-blue return took some time to digest — especially after watching Nikki bash her with a rock!
And it turns out that we weren’t the only ones taken by surprise by this particular resurrection. Melody Thomas Scott admitted on a recent Soap Opera Digest podcast that it was difficult for her, too, at first!
When asked about working with Susan Walters again, the actress jumped at the chance to talk about how great it is “to have her back.”
“It’s like she never left,” Scott added. “She plays the role so beautifully and we are having a lot of fun. I do feel bad, because whenever I’m working with her, I am vicious, insults, slapping. When we’re done, it’s like ‘Susan! I’m so sorry! Don’t take this personally!’”
With that said, the Nikki/Diane story hasn’t been the easiest journey for Scott to make. Despite how much she’s loved working with Walters again, the initial story idea just… didn’t make a lot of sense to her.
“When they said, ‘Susan’s coming back,’” the actress shared, “well first of all, it’s hard for me, because Susan wasn’t the actress that I thought I had killed.”
But that was a relatively minor hiccup. Recasts are as much a part of daytime as breathing is to living. Mostly, it was the “I thought I had killed” her part of the story that tripped up Scott.
“In my mind,” she explained, “I had trouble squaring the return of Diane because what I — Nikki and Mel — remembered was sitting in that creek on top of Diane with the big rock, hitting her, hitting her, hitting her!”
OK, graphic, but it really drives the point home.
“Supposedly at that time it was revealed [Diane] hadn’t died,” Scott mused. “I don’t remember it that way. I remember her being dead.”
Raise your hands if you thought that too! These days, though, we’ve all reconciled the non-death and dramatic return of Diane, and the story’s off and running full speed ahead! Well, unless Nikki gets her hands on a rock again. Then we’d guess all bets are off.
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In the meantime, we’re just going to enjoy the ride. So far it’s not just given us Diane’s return, but also Tucker’s — not to mention the Deacon/Nikki reunion we didn’t even realize we needed. Plus, it gave Scott a chance to finally make the jump with a Bold & Beautiful/Young & Restless crossover!
So hey, out-of-left field or not, it’s been a win.
To help make sense of it all, check out our photo gallery of Diane’s life, death and resurrection to track her unorthodox life in Genoa City.
