Christopher Cousins on Alan’s Struggle to Help Ashley on Y&R (EXCLUSIVE)

When Dr. Alan Laurent arrived in Genoa City, The Young & The Restless viewers were immediately intrigued by the handsome newcomer and wanted to know more about him and his history with Ashley in Paris. And to be honest, portrayer Christopher Cousins admitted to Soaps In Depth that he didn’t know a lot of that information when he initially took the role!

“Eileen [Davidson, Ashley] is one of those people that you work with that it’s like you’ve known each other for 20 years right away,” he confided. “So I immediately felt very comfortable with her and we would rib each other right away. So that was great.

“But I didn’t know anything about the story,” Cousins added. “Literally, I was learning what the story was while we were saying the lines because obviously, all this stuff happened off-camera. So it’s stuff that we have to talk about, our relationship, since I wasn’t on the show before. But she’s amazing.”

Traci called Alan because she and the rest of the Abbott family are terribly worried about Ashley’s mental health. And when Alan met with his friend, he encountered her newest alternate personality, the bubbly and seductive Belle. “He did not expect to see those alters,” Cousins declared. “They were not apparent when he was with her in Paris.”

Realizing the depths of Ashley’s problem is just the tip of the iceberg for Alan because as her friend, he can’t treat her himself. “It’s very sticky,” the actor teased. “And not only that, I mean, as far as I’m concerned, my character is deeply in love with Ashley, so he’s conflicted about his own feelings [and] doesn’t want to bring them into the mix. Clearly, she’s not in a place for that. There’s all sorts of stuff going on.”

Things are obviously going to get worse before they can get better, so stay tuned to Y&R to see how the storyline continues to unfold!