Ruby Fox-Miligan’s (Beth Cordingly) father Anthony (Nicholas Day) continues to immerse himself into the Emmerdale village in upcoming episodes, painting himself as a kind, old man who just wants to help out.
Before 2024 ended, we discovered Anthony’s true nature. In a flashback scene, we learnt that he was responsible for sexually abusing Ruby when she was a child.
He’s built up a façade (Picture: ITV)
Shortly after this, we saw Anthony in the café helping Arthur Thomas (Alfie Clarke) with his maths school work. Despite it being an interaction that left Arthur feeling grateful, audience members watched it with fear, knowing Anthony’s secret.
In upcoming episodes, Nicola (Nicola Wheeler) arranges a tutoring session between Anthony and her daughter Angel (Rebecca Bakes) and is later chuffed to learn that it went well.
With Anthony’s schooling becoming popular, Laurel (Charlotte Bellamy) finds him and arranges more private tutoring between him and Arthur.
A worrying development indeed – how much danger are Angelica and Arthur in?
Discussing this historic child sex abuse storyline, star Beth Cordingly said: ‘I felt really privileged to be given this storyline. When you feel like people are prepared to give you something as big as this you feel like they are trusting you with it. As a story it’s a subject that I feel, as many people do, very passionately about.
‘And I’ve worked in the past with Childline and the NSPCC, so it’s a subject that I wasn’t nervous about taking on in terms of being scared by the storyline, it was more that you just really want to make sure that if you’re telling something like that, you’re telling it right.
She added: ‘So it’s been a relief to get some of the reactions I’ve had from people who have been saying they feel like we’re telling the story in a sensitive way, because that’s what we wanted to do.
‘And we all felt, as a programme, if it helps one person, or it can help one person feel validated, or one person turns and says “this happened to me”, then that would be a really amazing thing.’
