Howard Wise/jpistudios.com
Young and Restless fans were treated to an epic storyline shocker last week when Vail Bloom’s Heather Stevens died after a physical confrontation with Sharon. Now, Bloom is opening up about her exit in a new interview with TV Insider.
Death Becomes Her
The actress, who originally played Heather from 2007-10, returned to the show in 2023, reclaiming the role from the two interim Heathers, Eden Riegel (2010-11) and Jennifer Landon (2012). After reestablishing Heather’s place in the Genoa City universe, including the character’s rekindled romance with Michael Graziadei’s Daniel Romalotti, it came as a surprise to Bloom when the show informed her of its plans to kill off her alter ego only a few weeks before it was filmed. She noted to the publication, “It’s always surprising when you get that news, but you’re aware that that can happen. That’s just the world of soaps.” Still, she described learning of Heather’s fate as “shocking because you love the character and it was such a beautiful, long run woven in and out through a couple decades.”
Bloom understands that in the ensemble world of soaps, the death of a character like Heather provides strong dramatic fallout. “You can understand and appreciate that for a storyline, it’s gonna get a lot of bang for your buck,” she pointed out in her interview. “You’re going to pull on the heartstrings of the audience, you’re going to engage them, you’re going to offset and uplift a different storyline.”
Howard Wise/jpistudios.com
Left Behind: Heather’s death is going to shake Daniel (Michael Graziadei) to his core.
Her final scenes on the show were “intense,” Bloom shared, adding that she was impressed with the final product when she watched it play out on screen. “I thought that the blocking played really well with all the movement and the activation in the scene,” she enthused. And she had nothing but praise for her scene partner in that juicy showdown, saying of Sharon Case, “She doesn’t have an ego that you sometimes see in acting. She’s really humble and so chill in between scenes.”
Above all, Bloom stressed how grateful she was for the opportunity to come back to the show 13 years after her original departure, calling her comeback “a million percent a blessing… it was so beautiful to have the experience of what I had in my early 20s and then be able to see it through the lens of someone who’s older and wiser and 10 years deeper into the industry.”
As for whether Heather could join the long line of soap characters to return from the dead, Bloom said, “I’m a huge fan of resurrection…. I would be open to it if the fans really wanted to see more of Heather again.”
