With over 20 years of daytime experience, you’d think that Amelia Heinle (Victoria Newman, “The Young and the Restless”) would have already been nominated at least once for a Daytime Emmy Award, but shockingly enough, this year’s nomination marks the first for the actress! And she says it’s all due to the incredibly emotional Delia’s death storyline she and her “Y&R” counterparts were given this year. “I don’t always put myself in the running, because I don’t always have [strong material to submit]… but this year, I just thought, you know, I’m just going to put myself in there, so it feels really good, because my instincts, I guess, were right!” she says, adding that the impact of the storyline was felt by everybody right from the beginning. “The first day of shooting the Delia stuff, after she died, this weird sort of camaraderie came over all of us. I don’t think we anticipated the magnitude of how heavy it would be, because sometimes you get a storyline that’s really heavy and nobody is into it and nobody can play it, and it’s like, ‘Ugh, this isn’t really working.’ But that day, it meant something to everybody. It almost felt like [the death] really happened. It was surreal, because it was the first time I’ve ever experienced this in all of my years of daytime, where the storyline actually felt pretty real.”

Consequently, she says everyone was on their game from the very start. “I knew that that week coming up was going to happen, and we’d have to launch into this really difficult storyline,” she says. “But the first day, we just launched right in and everybody was there emotionally, and you know, it was just hard for us. I don’t know why, it’s something I can’t even explain, but I was proud of everybody, because everybody was kind of like really feeling it, I guess.”

For those of you wondering what clips Heinle submitted for the Emmy race, she says it was Victoria’s reaction in the aftermath of Delia’s death. “I think we all pretty much submitted the Delia stuff, because it was really dramatic,” she says. “Dead babies always win Emmys.”

Obviously, there were a lot of tears in the clips she turned in. But surprisingly, Heinle says she’s really bad at mustering those up! “I’m not good at fake crying,” she declares. “I’m ok. But that’s one choice I’ve made in my daytime career: If I’m not truly going to cry, then I’m not going to bother crying.”

Though, what may be even more surprising is the fact that the actress says she doesn’t even want to win the Emmy at the ceremony on June 22! “I’m actually a little nervous, because I’m not good at being under the spotlight, except for on set,” she explains. “I don’t want to win, because I don’t want to give a speech! I’m really bad at speeches.”

Nonetheless, she’s looking forward to celebrating the great work done by all in the genre. “[Our executive producer], Jill Phelps, thanked everybody and congratulated everyone, and it was nice, because I looked around at the different people, and it’s cool, because everybody worked so hard,” she says. “It’s like a moral booster. You know, it just feels good. It’s fun.”