Emmerdale legend speaks out on return to soap 20 years on from ‘gutting’ shock death
EXCLUSIVE: Emmerdale star Sheree Murphy hopes to get her character Tricia Dingle back on the soap 20 years on from her shocking death.
Sheree Murphy’s Emmerdale character Tricia Dingle was brutally killed off being crushed in a storm (Image: ITV/REX)
Former Emmerdale star Sheree Murphy has revealed she’s had dicussions with her former on-screen husband Mark Charnock about a potential return to the soap after being abruptly killed off in 2004. The 48-year-old actress played barmaid Tricia Dingle for six years, but her time in the Dales came to an end when she was crushed in the debris of a storm and suffered a cardiac arrest as a result of her injuries.
20 years on from the shocking moment, Sheree said she still gets recognised by fans and has thought about how she could make a return after the exit left her “gutted”. Recalling her award-winning departure, the mother-of-four said she was offered a new contract but needed some time out at the time due to having her second child, her father’s sudden death and having to move house due to her footballer husband’s job.
While she initially believed a break from the soap would be fine, Sheree was then told by producers they had plans to kill her off instead and therefore couldn’t return. She shared: “I feel like I just needed a bit of time to myself because my dad died suddenly.
“I remember I was telling the producer that I couldn’t be there at the minute and he said, ‘Oh we’ve got this really good storyline, we were actually going to kill about five people off, but I think we’ll save it for you’.”
Stunned at his words, Sheree recalled: “I was like, ‘Oh’, I was gutted, I didn’t know what to say because I thought, I’m grateful. I suppose when you leave a soap it’s good to go out on a big high, but I was gutted.”
Sheree Murphy said she wishes she fought to keep Tricia Dingle on the soap (Image: ITV/REX)
With her head being “scrambled” at the time from the many things going on in her personal life, Sheree said she didn’t think about fighting to save her character, but now wishes she had.
“I should’ve really fought and said, ‘No I’ll come back’ because I loved playing Tricia so much,” she shared.
“But, I didn’t and then I was b****y killed off so there was no going back.”
As we discuss that many soap characters over the years have in fact returned from the dead such as EastEnders’ Cindy Beale, Sheree isn’t too keen on the idea and has other plans to potentially bring Tricia back.
Sheree Murphy played Tricia Dingle for six years up until her character’s death (Image: GETTY)
She spilled: “Sometimes you sort of think, how has that happened? I thought they were dead!
“But with Mark Charnock, we always used to say, ‘Can’t they write in Tricia’s evil twin?’ Nobody knew she had a twin and then she just turns up in the village looking for her grandad who died years ago or a sister, I don’t know something.
“And then everyone thinks it’s Tricia, but it’s not it’s her evil twin sister.
“You never know, do you? Something like that. Stupider things have happened in soaps haven’t they. I loved playing that character.”
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Emmerdale continues tonight at 7pm on ITV.