Michael Graziadei Dishes Daniel's Nightmare on YR

Fans were stunned when Heather was killed off on The Young & The Restless , and Michael Graziadei (Daniel) admitted that he was also surprised when Heather’s portrayer, Vail Bloom, shared the news of the twist with him after meeting with the soap’s headwriter and executive producer, Josh Griffith. The aftermath of the murder has been an emotional roller coaster as Daniel has to deal with the grief of losing Heather while also trying to support their daughter, Lucy.

“You want to be strong for that person, for your child for whoever else is there, but you’re almost not grieving yourself [to be strong for others],” Graziadei admitted to Soap Opera Digest . “I think that Josh and the writers did a really great job of showing exactly that, as Daniel’s kind of coming to terms with stuff and he’s having to break the news to everybody else — you know, the phone calls to Paul, telling his daughter — and then it’s not until he’s got a moment alone that it really just kind of takes over.”

Worse still, Daniel has fallen under suspicion after Sharon planted evidence to frame him and take suspicion off of herself. “I mean, what does a parent do in that situation?” the actor mused. “I think regardless of the denials and wanting to get ahead of whatever the charges are and be like, ‘I clearly didn’t do this, I could never do anything like this,’ first and foremost, you want to protect your child from any of that.”

Obviously, Daniel knows that he’s completely innocent and that someone else killed Heather, but it’s starting to look more and more likely that he’s going to take the fall for it. “I think it is 100 percent terrifying because he knows that he didn’t do anything,” Graziadei declared. “It’s not like he’s just trying to get out of this. And one has to wonder, who would want to do something like this, and who would want to frame him for something like this?

“And then, on top of that, he has to be completely terrified that he’s going to wind up losing his daughter all over again,” he continued. “I mean, not only has the person that he loves been taken away from him, but now, the potential is there for him to lose the rest of his family, as well.”

Stay tuned to Y&R to see what other twists and turns lay ahead as this storyline unfolds!