Young & Restless Exclusive: Lily Brooks O’Briant Tells All About Her New Role — and Her Genoa City Family

Lily Brooks O’Briant is taking it to the mat in her latest role outside of The Young and the Restless universe. In Lifetime’s Killing the Competition, she plays a cheerleader named Grace whose very ambitious mom Elizabeth (Melissa Joan Hart) is trying to relive her high school glory days. As you would expect from the title, the squad takes a murderous turn.

“Grace honestly just wants to be the most normal teenage girl that you could possibly imagine,” O’Briant tells Soaps.com. “She loves her friends, her boyfriend. She loves to baton twirl, and she loves just hanging out at school, but her mom has other plans for her. She desperately wants her to be on the dance team, because that’s a legacy that she had hoped to continue with her daughter.”

O’Briant continues, “Without spoiling too much, we see to what lengths Grace’s mom will go to make sure that Grace is on top.” There’s even a twist at the end that viewers won’t see coming! As for the daytime star, she appreciates that the role pushed her outside her comfort zone of Genoa City.

“Oh, I don’t dance at all,” admits O’Briant. “And I had to dance for this movie. So, I sent them a video of me dancing — not my finest hour that video will never see the light of day. I will I was very grateful because we had an incredible choreographer for our dance sequence, and she really helped us make sure that we had all of the moves in our bones before we did it. So, I felt very confident and very comfortable with it.”

Lily Brooks O’Briant adores her Young & Restless co-stars

When she’s on set at playing Lucy at The Young and the Restless, O’Briant is always supported by the cast who has taken her under their wings. She spilled the tea on what it’s like working on scenes with Lucy’s iconic grandmother Phyllis (Michelle Stafford) and father Daniel (Michael Graziadei), whom she affectionally calls “Graz.” Let’s just say, there is a lot of love going around!

“There are certain things that Michelle will notice about a script,” raves O’Briant. “She knows everything about every storyline that she’s been a part of. If something in the script doesn’t feel right to her character, she gives a whole reasoning of ‘I think I should say this, or I should act like this, or react in this way.’ O’Briant finds it “so inspiring as an actor to be able to speak up and really fight for your character.”

With Graziadei, it’s evident she has a playful friendship with him, describing her TV parent as “the cool dad.” She gushes, “He’s so funny. I love him so much. He comes to work in the craziest outfits, too. He’ll wear a Hawaiian shirt and red sunglasses.” He’s got a flair for fashion, but O’Briant says he’s also an anchor for her when they have to do touching scenes. “He’s not afraid to take risks and I love that,” she adds. “It always feels very natural with him, and we’ve had a lot of scenes together where we’ve had to be really emotional and be really vulnerable, too.” Phyllis and Daniel will always have Lucy’s back!

Killing the Competition premiers on Saturday, March 1 at 6/7c and will be available to stream the next day.