Every so often Emmerdale likes to raise the stakes for the fans with an episode that’s
packed with drama, peril and dangerous stunts and where the lives of beloved cast members
are left in the balance. An upcoming episode featuring a massive barn fire will see Moira
Dingle (Natalie J Robb) and Ruby Fox-Miligan (Beth Cordingly) trapped inside the inferno as their family and friends battle to save them. Natalie J Robb told us that Moira starts the fire after her health problems escalate. ‘She’s clearly convinced its partly menopause but what starts to worry her is the way she’s reacting: different outbursts, she can’t control her anger at the minute,’ she explained. This isn’t helped by Caleb (William Ash) telling Cain (Jeff Hordley) that he’s seen Moira and Nate (Jurell Carter) kissing – which is an entirely false assumption, according to Natalie.
‘Caleb believes I’ve kissed Nate but that is not what happens at all. I’ve been consoling Nate about Tracy (Amy Walsh), I basically offer him a hug, but from Caleb’s point of view it certainly looks more than a hug, he thinks it’s a kiss. Then he obviously tells Cain.’ Angered by Cain’s reaction as he launches an attack on Nate, Moira’s state of mind deteriorates when she gets to the barn and Ruby turns up to taunt her about her and Nate – and Moira starts to hallucinate that Ruby is her old nemesis Emma Barton (Gillian Kearney). Natalie described the scene. ’The PTSD comes through because we’re in the barn, the triggers are what it was before it was Emma Barton in the barn when she tried to kill me,’ she said. ‘I think it sets something off in her, she starts to see Emma’s face in Rubys’ face.
Ruby obviously doesn’t know what is going on, Moira has totally lost the plot. I’m freaking out and actually Moira is actually quite frightened, at that point that’s who she believes she’s seeing and Ruby says something quite similar to what Emma said to her just before she tried to kill her in the barn. She’s very triggered, loses the plot a bit and doesn’t know where she’s at.’ And that’s when Moira fires her shotgun in the air, it hits a lightbulb and the sparks from that start the fire. In the ensuing panic Ruby grabs for the gun and Moira hits her with it. ‘Ruby is lying on the ground and the flames are just starting, it’s just the beginning,’ Natalie recalled. ‘Ruby is knocked out and then I try and wake her up when Moira is out of her PTSD moment. She does switch out of it and then immediately goes into trying to help Ruby. She won’t remember why Ruby is in the barn in the first place.’
As other people, including Mackenzie (Lawrence Robb), Cain, John (Oliver Farnworth) and Caleb, rush to the scene to try to help, things suddenly get much, much worse as Natalie told us. ‘There is an explosion,’ she revealed. ‘And maybe not everybody gets out of that explosion…’ The viewers are in for some nail-biting scenes, and Natalie thoroughly enjoyed filming them. ‘I thought it was great,’ she said. ‘I’ve been assured it looks really good in the way they’ve done it. ‘The stunt doubles were very brave. There’s a moment where something happens and the fire is completely all around them and I don’t know how they did that really. It goes to show you that’s why that’s their job and we do our job. Quite scary moments but they were fantastic, very professional in one take when they did it.’ Even with the stunt doubles, acting in the scenes wasn’t without peril for the rest of the cast, as Natalie pointed out. ‘You can’t wear anything flammable like have hairspray on your hair and stuff, otherwise you’d go up, that’d be the first thing to catch,’ she said.
