After 22 years as troubled Chas Dingle, actress Lucy Pargeter isn’t planning on going anywhere else just yet
WORDS: SUE CRAWFORD IMAGES: ITV/MARK BRUCE, SHUTTERSTOCK
Soap actors often talk of getting itchy feet – wanting to go off and explore other roles in gritty thrillers or period dramas, or even to try their luck in Hollywood.
But if anyone tried to take Lucy Pargeter away from her Emmerdale home, she warns she’d put up a fight.
“I don’t think I will ever make the decision to leave myself – they’ll have to write me out, but even they they’d have to drag me out kicking and screaming!” she declares with a laugh.
“I’ve got a job that I love and I’ll stay as long as they’ll have me.
“Even if I’m doing difficult storylines, there’s not a day goes by where we don’t laugh and giggle. We’re sometimes like children in kindergarten.
“Even though we’ve all been here so long, we still enjoy creating stories and we’re constantly coming up with ideas.
“It can be long hours and it’s tiring sometimes, but I can’t complain, because I love it.”
Lucy is currently tackling one of the hardest storylines of her 22 years in the show, after her character Chas Dingle was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The ITV soap is working closely with the research and support charity Breast Cancer Now, following former Woolpack landlady Chas as she prepares for a double mastectomy after a lump was spotted in her breast.
At the same time Chas has warned her family that they will need to get tested, after being told she is carrying a BRCA gene alteration, which greatly increases a woman’s chance of developing breast and ovarian cancer and a man’s chance of developing male breast cancer and prostate cancer.
After putting on a brave face and only allowing herself two weeks off work, Chas’s bravado eventually fails as she’s taken into surgery. Afterwards the magnitude of her operation finally dawns on her, as she examines her new body.
“I think it will take a psychological toll on Chas,” Lucy says. “She’s a single parent, she’s not in an established relationship, but I don’t think she’s ready to just be a spinster on the shelf, so I’m sure it will have a massive impact on her going forward – how she views her body and possible future relationships.”
Although fortunately Lucy has no personal experience of breast cancer, she has had painful breast surgery.
