Here’s How Young and the Restless Hid Ray Wise’s Return As Ian Ward

In this social media-obsessed world, it’s hard for daytime soaps to keep a secret. So when The Young and the Restless decided to break out the big guns for its latest sinful storyline, the show’s producers knew they were going to have to get stealthy. They had to go above and beyond to protect the news that Ian Ward was back. And with a partner in crime to boot. As a result, the need for secrecy became paramount.

Cloak and Dagger

Y&R’s Head Writer, Josh Griffith, told Soap Opera Digest, “We’ve got a good group here that knows how to keep a secret.” That’s a good thing because he and his team had to go the extra mile to keep the secret under wraps. After all, “the reveal is going to be too great.”

READ THIS: How Y&R decided Ian Ward would terrorize Sharon and the Newmans.

A few of the tactics the show used to keep the big Ray Wise return news on the down low:

• Kept the names Ian and Jordan out of the mix. “We were very careful that the [characters’] names didn’t appear in scripts or in any kind of [internal] documents,” Griffith said to SOD.
• Separation was mandatory. “They very cleverly kept me in scenes that were away from most of the other people and just working with Colleen (Zenk),” Wise recently told TV Insider. “They pretty much sealed me off from everybody else, and anyone that did come in contact with me, they would make them swear on their life not to give away the secret.”
• The use of an alter ego was key. “They called me Mr. X,” Ray Wise revealed in a video on the Y&R Insider YouTube Channel. “They didn’t want anybody on the show to know it was me until they absolutely had to.”
• Y&R labeled Wise’s parking spot with “Mr. X.” Even his costar, Colleen Zenk, didn’t know about this. “It’s fun to walk, you know, to drive into your parking space, and [it] says Mr. X,” added Wise.

Zenk confirmed that the producers employed some of the same tactics when she first arrived on the show. “So very smart, really,” Wise responded. “It was a masterstroke for Josh [Griffith] to put the two of us together.

READ THIS: Colleen Zenk sets the record straight on Jordan’s return.

Check out the full Colleen Zenk and Ray Wise YR Insider interview below.