Matty Barton (Ash Palmisciano) is not the kind of person known to be involved in thuggery, but when he’s left holding a knife dripping in Samson Dingle’s (Sam Hall) blood in Emmerdale, people will begin to question how well they know the barista.
Matty finds himself in this dire situation after defending himself against an actual thug, a viciously transphobic thug.
Josh, Samson’s friend, is the man in question, with whom Samson is planning a trip around Europe in his new car having just passed his test.
He’s ecstatic to ditch the L plates, but when a worried Lydia fails to give him the kudos he wants, he heads to the HOP to celebrate with pal Josh.
Josh straight away gives a hint to his true colours. He begins outrageously flirting with Amy (Natalie Ann Jamieson), despite her newlywed status and despite her attempting to ward him off, and he weirdly makes it clear he knows Matty is trans.
It becomes too much for Amy and she decides to leave work early to escape Josh’s clutches, prompting Matty to confront him. Matty dishes him some home truths and kicks both Josh and Samson out.
Josh is embarrassed and enraged, two emotions he is not mature enough to process. His anger only grows when Matty once again gets the upper hand on him.
Josh cruelly starts deadnaming Matty in a transphobic attack, before deciding he’s not finished with him yet.
The tensions boil over as Josh starts threatening Matty for the money in the till, and as things spiral, Matty grabs something to protect himself. Josh shoves Samson into Matty, who is holding a knife.
Taking us through the events, Ash Palmisciano explained: ‘At first you are not really sure what’s happened, they’re sort of embracing, and as Samson pulls away they realise Samson has actually been stabbed by the knife Matty was holding.
‘Matty’s in complete shock it happened so fast and was a complete accident, he doesn’t actually know what happened he’s processing how this could have happened.
‘And Jai assumes Matty has stabbed him because nasty Josh decides to tell him that Matty has just come at Samson for no reason.
‘Josh is acting panicked, all of a sudden he flips from being this nasty, horrible guy to this innocent, panicky friend acting all concerned and telling Jai to keep Matty away from them, he is lying basically and making the situation look far worse than it was.’
At the very least, Matty’s facing attempted murder charges, at worst he’ll be done for taking Samson’s life. Either way, it’s a terrifying prison sentence if it comes to it.
But on the plus side, Ash is thrilled to be at the centre of the action.
‘It felt good to get my teeth into this as it is such a topical story; as it includes transphobia,’ he shared.
‘But also in terms of having action it was great as we had a fight director, Kate Walters on set who choreographed the action and it looks amazing on screen – it has been done so well. It was exciting to work with the actors in order to make it look as real as possible.
‘Our amazing director Pip Short was passionate about making everything make sense, everyone was behaving in a way that felt right for the characters. It was really exciting to be able to do something like that.
‘That said, on set it’s a strange job where you’re going to go into work and you are pretending to stab someone that day, but it was really exciting to do.’
