BREAKING HEART!!! Emmerdale star speaks out as cruel twist sparks Bear exit fears
Emmerdale star Joshua Richards has addressed his character Bear Wolf’s harrowing storyline on the ITV soap, after a death threat teased a sad exit for him and another villager
Actor Joshua Richards has addressed Emmerdale’s latest twist for his character Bear Wolf, amid a death threat.
Fans saw on Tuesday night that villain Celia Daniels insisted to Ray Walters that Bear, like April Windsor, had to be dealt with. After weeks of hiding him on the farm and exploiting him, amid the soap’s harrowing modern slavery plot, it was heavily teased Bear faced grave danger – with April also unknowingly facing a death threat now that she knew where Bear was.
Celia told Ray that April knew too much, as did Bear. As Ray panicked, Celia warned him that time was up and that she’d take care of Bear, while telling Ray to get rid of April. She declared they would “make them disappear for good”, before handing Ray a knife.
Following the threat airing on Tuesday, Bear actor Joshua Richards has spoken out, sharing his pride for the storyline and the awareness it has raised. He said: “I think the job that has been done by the producers, the writers and the script editors has been outstanding.
“And to bring a story like this to the forefront, which was up for analysis and discussion, makes great sense to us as a general public about the kind of things which are happening under our noses in plain sight in modern Britain today. Modern slavery is alive and well, and it’s horrifying.
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“I think it was very brave for people for them to bring this subject forward and I’m intensely proud of what we, as a team, have done. It was a huge collaboration and this is a subject that most of the time is brushed under the carpet. But they brought it to the forefront of our minds.”
On how Bear ended up caught in Celia and Ray’s dark world, Joshua shared how the storyline left him thinking about is late father. He said: “This is something which I haven’t discussed in any depth before, because I’ve been loath to do it.
“But after talking to my sister in great depth, who’s been watching this storyline, it put her in mind of my late father, who, in his later years, actually did suffer a similar kind of depression. God bless him. And as a big strong man, as he was all his life, to see him reduced to somebody who felt redundant, who felt useless, who no longer had a purpose in life, I could fully understand it, and my sister found it very upsetting, watching these scenes.
“From her from her viewpoint, to talk to me about it, nailed it home to me, but, yes, I admit I have seen this first hand, and I do know what can actually happen to somebody who, for all of their life, was a leader, and an intensely physically strong man, to be reduced to somebody who could be just shoved from pillar to post quite easily. If unscrupulous people, had got hold of him, but luckily he was in the arms of his beloved family, but this is something which is very close to me.”
Joshua praised his co-stars, while sharing he hoped Celia and Ray would face their comeuppance. He said: “I think the viewers can’t wait from the feedback I’ve been getting from people in the streets and from family and family.