Emmerdale‘s Eden Taylor-Draper is “being challenged like never before” with her ongoing domestic abuse storyline, says her co-star.
Fans of the ITV soap will be aware that Belle Dingle is currently being controlled by her manipulative husband Tom King (James Chase) and it has been confirmed that Charity Dingle becomes suspicious of their relationship in upcoming scenes.
Emma has opened up about her character Charity being invovled in the “difficult to watch” storyline and also working with her co-star Eden, who has played Belle since 2005.
Speaking to the press, Emma said: “I love Eden will all my heart so working with her as well, because we do see each other socially, it’s great because we’ve got some good stuff coming up so she’s going to come over and stay and we’re going to blast the scenes and work on it really hard.
“When we come to do this lovely episode it will have real meaning because we would have worked on it. She’s smashing it out of the park as the young ones would say. She is truly remarkable and I think she’s really found herself and she’s really coming into her own and she’s doing stuff and being challenged in a way she’s ever been before and she’s stepping up to the mark and I’m really proud of her as a friend.”
“I have been watching and it’s strong stuff. I spend a lot of my time screaming at Tom. It’s difficult to watch sometimes I must say. It’s a lovely opportunity for Charity to be with Belle.”
The corecive storyline with Belle and Tom has dominated the soap ever since the paie tied the knot on Valentine’s Day and their relationship has got progessively worse over the past few months.
Producer Laura Shaw has revealed that she’s been blown away by the audience’s reaction to the storyline and hinted exactly when Tom could finally get exposed. She told the press: “We said right from the beginning that we wanted to tell this story as truthfully and authentically as we can and let’s face it for people who are subjected to domestic abuse this isn’t something that’s over in a couple of weeks.
“This is something that goes on for a long length of time and we wanted to be truthful to that. I think you can expect this storyline to run until the end of this year.”
“It’s a tricky one because we’ll see people start to look at it a bit more quizzically and question certain things they’re seeing but from the research we’ve done and what the charities have said to us, quite often people don’t really pick up on these things and it’s very difficult as an outsider looking in to ask those sort of questions so while we might see people picking up on it. I’m not sure we’re going to see anybody putting the whole picture together.
“I think the audience reaction has been phenomenal. Domestic abuse is not new to soap but the reaction has been incredible and the letters and comments we’ve had from women and men reaching out and we’re aware we’re giving people a voice to speak out and that’s what we want. What we will see is Tom finding different ways to manipulate Belle and to control Belle so we will see an escalation.”
You can access free and confidential support from Refuge’s 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247 and digital support via live chat Monday-Friday 3-10pm via www.nationaldahelpline.org.uk. You can also visit the the tech safety website https://refugetechsafety.org/ to learn more about technology-facilitated abuse.
Emmerdale airs weeknights on ITV1 and ITVX at 7.30pm
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