In tonight’s Emmerdale Thursday 14th August – viewers watched as Charity (Emma Atkins) had a flashback to the drunken night she kissed Vanessa (Michelle Hardwick). Following this, Vanessa turned Charity out onto the village main street, clearly rejecting her advances. Charity then found Ross Barton (Michael Parr), who offered her comfort.
Ross, now aware of Charity’s surrogacy pregnancy announcement, pressed her to know if the baby could potentially be his. Charity attempted to reassure him by stating that she is carrying an embryo. However, as the celebrations in the pub continued, Ross’s persistent question regarding the baby’s paternity remained unanswered.
So, Emma, the audience have just seen the flashback where Charity and Ross clearly had a night together. Is it fun for you when you know a twist like that’s coming and the audience doesn’t know?
Yeah, it’s absolutely brilliant to play knowing that Charity is in such a mess now.
This has created a huge element of conflict for her and as an actor you can’t hope for a better storyline. When you’re just in the midst of chaos, dilemma and moral questioning of your own character. It makes you go, how are you going to get yourself out of this one? And I know the audience will just be like, oh my God, what will she do? Who can she tell? Because I think they all are going to immediately jump to the idea of, hang on then it’s not Sarah and Jacob’s baby.
I think it is just a jaw dropping moment for those that have followed the storyline. Because it just ups the stakes with everything. Sarah’s just got this desperate need to be a mum, Charity’s so desperate to please Sarah in that, she feels her vocation is being this vessel to carry this child. There’s so much at stake for them and the audience finding this out, is just that amazing moment. It’s a good soap moment, a gift.
And it’s a gift of a storyline in respect that her conflict is so apparent when she’s talking to Ross and trying to steer him away from even going down that route.
Yeah, there’s just so many avenues now of dilemma – she’s stuck in this hellhole of what do I do next and who do I turn to and it’s cataclysmic holding in that kind of secret. Surely at some point she’s definitely going to implode. I think the audience enjoys witnessing that, don’t they? They like to witness someone holding a secret. Who is she going to tell, who’s going to find out, when will Ross cotton on fully? There’s all of these things spinning through her mind.
Has it been a really interesting storyline to tackle?
At first I was thinking, this is the most crazy idea of a woman potentially giving birth to her great granddaughter, but actually, there’s so much in it that is believable, because she loves Sarah. Sarah’s been desperate to be a mum for so long and when she woke up to that awful news that she’d had a hysterectomy, Charity wanted to swoop in and save her. Even though at first she was against the idea of Sarah being a mom at all. After at first trying to fight off and dissuade Sarah. She suddenly turned around and said I’ll do it. Anything to help Sarah.
Also, I think the audience has brilliantly got behind it. I didn’t know how they would react, but it has been really positive feedback so far.
And there’s so much conflict with Mack, because it’s clear that he would have loved a baby with Charity.
There are so many emotions going on which again, you know puts more of a spotlight onto Charity’s awful secret and dilemma.
The situation was awful to begin with as it began with poor Sarah’s position. It’s so sad for Sarah as her situation is awful. She so wanted a child but can’t physically have one. And in real life there are poor girls in that situation with cervical cancer or who have had to have a hysterectomy. So Charity had good intentions initially to help Sarah in her plight to have a child but now it’s clashing with the awful situation she’s in. The fact Mack is now so upset as he and Charity lost a baby and it was Mack’s dream was to have a child with Charity but Charity told him way back when that it wasn’t going to happen. How she wasn’t going to go down that route again. But now she has but for someone else. He’s rightfully hurt by this although wanting to support her.
There are just so many layers to this story. So Charity had thought she had closed the door on having another child and that prospect killed Mackenzie in many ways – she was aware of that so Charity now holds all that guilt. Of how he is feeling. And now this new situation so this all comes back up to haunt her and it’s just a sort of whirlpool of awfulness. And what will she do?
We can see her anxiety in the pub the night they celebrate because everyone is delighted and everyone is happy and you just see this panic in Charity’s face like, oh God, I’m in a pickle here.
It has literally been like playing out a jigsaw puzzle, because all the parts are all over the place. Charity’s lies – trying to keep on top of them. I’ve had to work to keep on top of the chronology when filming as we film things out of order. But I love it and I think that particular episode, when she’s in the pub after the flashback. You can see what she’s going through. I think that episode is going to shine a light on Charity’s foolishness. You kind of want to feel sorry for her, but she gets herself in these situations. She thought she had lost the baby after the fall in the woods. So she went out and got drunk, she took solace with Vanessa. She throws herself at her knowing they have this fantastic chemistry, which was brilliant play and I love working with Michelle, and I can’t wait for the audience to see that because I know that there’s so many people that loved that connection. Then within five minutes, she comes out, having been rejected only to then fall into the arms, very drunkenly of an equally drunk Ross, who’s got a bottle of whisky and she’s like, yeah, self sabotage, here I come.
I think she does all this because she knows she’s got to somehow then wake up and tell Sarah that she might have lost the baby from the fall from going for a walk in the woods. I love all the different levels, the complexity of it all. It’s just, oh no, here she goes again. What’s she done now?
We don’t want to give it away, but I know you’ve got lots of great scenes coming up with her trying to keep everyone happy at home while she’s holding this secret.
It’s brilliant. I’ve got some amazing scenes with Michelle, amazing scenes with Mike, amazing scenes with Lawrence, and of course, Katie Hill, who’s fantastic. They’re all brilliant to work with and so it gives me that element of chaos and as an actor that is wonderful to play.
You must love coming to work knowing what you’ve got to do every day.
I look forward to it because the storyline is written so brilliantly – the writing has been fantastic and we’re getting some brilliant directors in. It’s just a joy to come to work every day.
