Keck's Exclusives: Revenge Revives Amber Valletta's Lydia Davis

Wow! I never saw that coming. On the Nov. 17 episode of Revenge, Amber Valletta's Lydia Davis returned from the dead after presumably perishing in a plane crash at the end of Season 1. Turns out no one was more surprised that Valletta, who was given no indication that Lydia would ever return after shooting her last episode in early 2012.

"Mike Kelley (the show's creator and then-executive producer) told me, 'Thank you for your work, but we're going to kill you now,'" recalls the actress. "After that, you kind of think, 'Okay, that's it.' And then the whole second season they didn't have Lydia come back."

Lydia's fate changed when Sunil Nayar replaced Kelley as showrunner. "I was pleasantly surprised and really excited to be back," says Valletta, who has been keeping secret Lydia's return "for months. Sunil told me he put Lydia's name up on the writers' planning board when he took over, so I've known since very early into the season. It was really hard for me to keep it secret because I'm good friends with some of the cast, including Josh (Bowman), Emily (VanCamp), Gabe (Mann) and Henry (Czerny). I see Madeleine (Stowe) a lot in my neighborhood, and when I bumped into her she still didn't know. And if anyone would have known, it would have been her. Then I accidentally said something to her husband and told him not to tell her, but then I got a text from Madeleine saying, 'I can't believe it; I'm so glad!'"

Perhaps we shouldn't have been too surprised, considering Stowe's Victoria had also been among that same doomed flight's dead before making a dramatic return. "Because Victoria was Lydia's best friend, there's no way Lydia would have watched Victoria get off the plane without following her," Valletta says. "Especially considering we were going to testify in the David Clarke case. We ended up bartering a deal that we would lay low, but while Victoria returned to being queen of the Hamptons, I was schlepping drinks down in Ecuador."

As viewers saw, Lydia emerged from the shadows as a pawn of Margaux, who is trying to dig up dirt on the Graysons. "I really like Margaux, but she's no match for Lydia," says Valletta, who'll appear in four episodes before starting working on TNT's new political drama, Legends, in March. "Once I make my presence known, my scenes will be with Victoria, Conrad and Emily. Lydia is still genuinely in love with Conrad, and also knows something's not right with Emily. There are some classic lines coming and things with Victoria get really gnarly. We go toe to toe and it even gets physical. The bitch is back!"

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