Emmerdale star Joe Absolom has responded to his unexpected role in the soap’s devastating April Windsor and Marlon Dingle episode last night. The special focused on the daughter and father amid April’s exploitation at the hands of evil Ray Walters.

In it, we saw the teen appear to reveal her ordeal to her father, and while it had been expected to just feature the two characters, there was a surprise cameo from Joe’s character Ray, as he fired a gun at Marlon and left him for dead as a consequence of his daughter speaking out.

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However, it was revealed that a large chunk of the episode was in April’s imagination, and that she didn’t actually go through with telling her dad the truth in the end.

Opening up about his unexpected appearance, Joe admitted on Lorraine that he was as taken aback as fans were.

“When I read the script – they said it’s a two hander between April and Marlon, so I said, ‘why have they sent me the script?’” he recalled.

“I read it, and when I come in and shoot Mark [Charnock, who plays Marlon]… I was thinking, how am I going to face him at the coffee machine? I’ve only been there 10 minutes and I shoot a really key member of the cast who’s been there forever!

“And he’s a fantastic actor, so as I read it, I thought, oh no, I’m going to have to just say sorry. But then I carried on reading and it was a dream, so it was okay.”

The star further spoke about seeing a different side to his villainous character, saying: “I think because it’s a soap and because we film so much, we get to tell a lot more about each character.

“There is a different side to Ray – he meets Laurel and finds a relationship with her that is blossoming and is hopefully very good.”