April Windsor’s (Amelia Flanagan) life in Emmerdale has quickly descended into utter hell. After the damaged teen suffered through homelessness and a stillbirth after running away from home.
Upon returning home and reuniting for a second time with her friend from the streets, Dylan Penders (Fred Kettle), she’s found herself trapped deep within an organised crime ring, headed by Celia Daniels (Jaye Griffiths).
With her boyfriend, Dylan, already under the thumb of Celia’s subordinate, (and adopted son) Ray Walters (Joe Absolom), April’s initial foray into drug dealing was to protect and help her new boyfriend, though the machinations of Celia have found both of the teens indebted to the criminal gang, with little means of escape.
Celia has sought to push April further into criminality and has sent her on two prostitution jobs, the second of which resulted in the fatality of the client. Calling on her bosses for help, Celia aided in disposing of the body, but made it perfectly clear to April that her debt had increased substantially and she ‘owns’ her.
Celia and Ray have seen to it to make April as isolated as possible. After she dropped an ecstasy tablet that her brother Leo Goskirk (Harvey Rogerson) ended up taking, stepmum Rhona Goskirk (Zoe Henry) wanted her out, and April agreed, much to dad Marlon Dingle’s (Mark Charnock) upset, subsequently moving into grandad Bob Hope’s (Tony Audenshaw) B&B.
Speaking on how their relationship currently stands with April moving out, Mark said: ‘Well she’s moving into her grandad’s, as you can imagine since he got her back it’s been a house full of egg shells and I think they have circled each other, tentatively, for quite a long time now and the problem they’ve got is they haven’t set a formal arrangement.
‘So he’s constantly trying to win her round, gently, and she’s constantly resisting that or maybe doesn’t trust it.
‘So neither of them really understand where the other one stands, so it’s a very difficult – I wouldn’t go as far to say it’s a standoff but there’s a lot of nervous energy around the house.’
With a special episode coming up, focussing on the broken relationship between father and daughter, Mark spoke of his excitement at the prospect of working with Amelia to further the dark storyline: ‘Can you imagine, I was absolutely buzzing. It’s thrilling, it’s flattering to be trusted with an episode, and to work with Amelia in that way. It’s an absolutely outstanding script, it’s an absolute gift for an actor. So obviously very excited, yeah.
‘In a normal episode there’s about 15/16/17 scenes and we did nearly all of them over a two day period so it was essentially in one location.
‘It was really rewarding, really intense given the nature of the story. There comes a point in it where you just kind of think ‘I hope this turns out as well as the script deserves’. But yeah, it was an incredible experience.’
Speaking on the future of the plot, Mark teased that dark times lay ahead for April.
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‘I can tease it by saying things are going to get considerably worse before they get better and in this special episode, something happens that when i read it, it shocked me so much that I thought ‘Oh god, I wish I’d known about it before I read it’ because it really threw me, it’s just a great twist of drama.
‘There’s so much good stuff and the great thing about this story is it impacts so many different people. Tony Audenshaw has been brilliant in it as well, as Bob, he has been superb, who’s like a further circle away from the reality of it. It’s a storyline that keeps on giving – it’s dark but in the best dramatic way that a story can be dark.’
On the importance of telling the incredibly dark story of grooming, county lines drug dealing and sex trafficking, Mark said: ‘Yeah, it’s a terrifying world and I think so many people fall prey to it and so many families are devastated and powerless in the face of it.
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It’s a horrific thing. I’m surprised it hasn’t really been done before in a soap actually, there’s so much to tell in a story like this with so many ramifications. So of course, I think it’s a really important story.’
MORE: Emmerdale confirms fate of fan-favourite character in ITVX release – but dark scenes follow
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