Camryn Grimes Says Working on ‘Y&R’ Keeps Her Young: ‘Clearly, I’m a Teen Mother!’ (EXCLUSIVE)
Soap redhead Camryn Grimes on Mariah’s secret, Teriah’s fate—and being a real-life mom
With Mariah keeping a secret that threatens her happily ever after with Tessa on The Young and the Restless, portrayer Camryn Grimes talks to Woman’s World about playing the late Cassie Newman’s twin and riding the ebb and flow of soap opera storylines.
The 35-year-old two-time Daytime Emmy-winner who’s spent over 20 years on The Young and the Restless—first as young Cassie and now as Mariah—gets candid about what it’s like to be a real-life mom when she’s surrounded by a cast and crew that’s watched her grow up.
‘I still feel like I should be getting a call from Teen Mom’
Having joined The Young and the Restless as a 7-year-old in 1997, played Cassie’s devastating passing in 2005, and then brought twin Mariah to town in 2014, Camryn Grimes has played 20 years of Genoa City drama over the last three decades—which made becoming a mother to Bridger Elias in December 2023 rather interesting!
“I still feel like I should be getting a call from Teen Mom,” cracks the actress. “Why aren’t they recording my story? Clearly, I’m a teen mother! That’s the amazing thing about still being here all these years later. Y&R is all I’ve known, and it’s sort of a time capsule. I can tie every point of change and self-realization to the show, so it keeps me feeling young and attached to so many different chapters of my life.
“I’m working with the people who knew me when I was six or seven, and that’s a crazy thing to think about,” she adds. “So sometimes, it’s hard for me to be like, ‘I’m an adult!’”
What the ‘Y&R’ mom loves about being a soap actress
When she’s with Bridger and his father, voice-over actor Brock Powell, reality quickly sets in.
“I go home, and obviously I’m 35 years old, I am a wife, and I am a mother,” Grimes says. “The dual lives we can have as soap actors is something I love about this job—and how lucky we are to come here, treat it like a 9-to-5 in the acting world, play some drama, and then go home to our families and be able to enjoy that?”
Amid the madness of soap parenting storylines, Grimes has also found grounding support from her The Young and the Restless family members.
“A lot of people here (at Y&R) have had a hand in my journey, and it’s been very celebratory,” Grimes says. “I’ve felt really emboldened by everybody here who’s wanted this for me—not the me on screen, but the me behind the scenes—and are witnessing it happen and investing in it. It’s lessened any of the missing Bridger that I might have at work because everybody just wants to talk about him, and so do I! So it’s very beneficial for me. It’s therapeutic.”
How she feels about cutie patootie Cassie flashbacks
As Grimes enjoys adulting, onscreen and off, she gets a kick out of looking back at her early days as The Young and the Restless’ Cassie.
“Sometimes, it’s hard to recognize that that’s me,” she admits. “It’s a period of my life that existed on screen, and it’s really cool to see it in flashbacks.”
Even cooler? Two decades later, Cassie’s death still propels story—most recently throwing Sharon off the deep end after Faith’s close call brought it all back up for her and Nick.
“What Sharon went through was very tough and nuanced,” Grimes says. “It spoke to the power of that storyline, as well as to the nature of grief, which doesn’t lessen or dissipate over time. It just changes into something different. You can have periods where things are normal, and then a shift happens in your world, and you’re right back in it.”
Grimes is ready for Mariah’s summer drama!
To be fair, much of what Sharon went through was drug-fueled! While Mariah feels responsible for the horror Ian inflicted on her mother and her wife, however, Grimes hasn’t exactly had her own front-burner story in a while.
“Everybody understands how that oscillates in this medium,” Grimes says. “You’re gonna have years maybe, where you’re in somebody else’s story or you’re adjacent to it. It kind of revs you back up. It gives you that little break and that moment to breathe, so you’re not catapulted into emotion after emotion after emotion or crisis after crisis. For an actor, that break is very appreciated.
“Then you have times where it’s about you, and it’s full on,” adds Grimes, whose story is heating up this summer. “So you learn to ride the waves of that, and you get very comfortable with it. That being said, it is nice to be in the story in SOME capacity. With Sharon, I was playing the concern for her, right? I didn’t get to freak out, but I got to watch somebody freak out. So I liked it!”
The ‘Y&R’ redhead says Cassie and Mariah ‘are two different walks of my life’
While Grimes famously became the youngest Daytime Emmy-winner for Outstanding Younger Actress at only 10, she recalls yearning for big soapy drama during that first run.
“Cassie was a very sweet little girl who had every opportunity in the world,” she reminds. “Most of the time, I would just be coming down the stairs and saying, ‘Mom and Dad, I love you!’ It was just very innocent. I always wanted to play something juicier.”
Grimes got some of that in the story that led to Cassie’s death, but then she was off the show and relegated to ghostly visits… until Mariah showed up almost a decade later and the 24-year-old got to show another side of herself.
“Mariah is the opposite of Cassie,” says Grimes, who won the 2018 Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress a few years into the role. “She had a dark life, has traumatic experiences, and was very closed off. She’s sardonic, sarcastic, and used to have a chip on her shoulder.
“I’m not totally Mariah and I’m not totally Cassie, but they are two different walks of my life,” she adds. “I was Cassie when I was Cassie, but I grew up and I am Mariah, at times now. I have a very sarcastic sense of humor and I’ve been through crap, so I bring that with me.”
Grimes talks ‘Teriah’
Another thing she has in common with Mariah is that they are both bisexual.
“I remember Christel Khalil (who plays Lily) came into the makeup and hair room and said, ‘Did you hear they’re going to make someone gay? And I think it’s going to be me,’” Grimes recounts. “I just remember thinking in my head, ‘No, it’s me.’”
It was indeed Mariah who grappled with unexpected feelings for her friend… only to accept that she was bi and ultimately marry Tessa, in December 2022.
“It was an amazing story that was just about love—like any other story on the show,” Grimes says. “It was also a way to get to know this character better. Mariah hadn’t had luck in love and was still closed off and there were walls up. I’m just so grateful that they felt like they could trust me with that story. It was a huge honor and a huge undertaking, and honestly, it helped me discover more about myself.”
The soap vet is grateful to fans as Mariah’s summer heats up
Like all soap opera couples, Mariah and Tessa have hit some serious bumps in the road on The Young and the Restless. Now, however, Mariah’s got a secret—one that has her putting those walls back up—and as Sharon’s daughter grapples with her guilt over Ian’s last round of terror, Woman’s World hears the way she deals with it will be quite shocking!
Whatever’s coming for Mariah this summer and whether Teriah can survive it, Grimes is ready for action and filled with gratitude—for her The Young and the Restless job and family, her guys at home, and the viewers who tune into her soap every day.
“I would not be here without the fans,” she concludes. “Their love for Cassie and for me that got me back on the show has made my life what it is. I could not be more grateful. I hope I can continue to entertain you and bring you stories that you love to watch. That’s my goal.”
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