With Samson Dingle (Sam Hall) having confessed that he lied about Matty Barton (Ash Palmisciano) deliberately stabbing him on Emmerdale, the path was clear to Matty being released from prison in Wednesday (July 17)’s episode. But his ordeal wasn’t quite over.
Moira (Natalie J. Robb) and Amy (Natalie Ann Jamieson) went to the hospital, where Matty was being treated for injuries he’d got his cell mate to inflict on him because he was so terrified of being in the prison after thuggish Robbo (John O’Neill) discovered that he’s trans.
Matty’s wife and his mum told him the good news – but at that moment a prison guard came into the room to take Matty back to prison. Until the court had made a decision, he was going back behind bars.
Back in his cell it wasn’t long before Robbo appeared, and he was absolutely vile. The language he used and his threatening manner left Matty in no doubt that he was still at risk from a beating or worse. Luckily a prison officer intervened.
Later, as Matty was locked up in his cell, he was physically safe from the other prisoners but their obscene taunts kept him awake and terrified for his life.
The next day he was due in court and Cain (Jeff Hordley) and Amy went to pick him up after he was told that he was now a free man. They didn’t see him outside the court and headed home, where Moira was worried to learn that Matty was apparently missing. She set off to search for him and found him fairly easily at the playground.
Samson approached and said he was sorry. Matty wanted to know why, after everything, Samson was still protecting his friend Josh (Osian Morgan), who’d been the main instigator of what happened at the Hide the day Samson was stabbed.
He told Samson what it was really like in prison and gave him the advice that everyone had been giving him – to keep his head down and his mouth shut.
Amy was overjoyed to have Matty safely back home, but it was soon apparent that it wasn’t going to be easy for him to adjust to normal life again. After Amy had gone to bed he switched the lights off but everything – the jingling of the house keys, the click of the light switch, the sudden darkness – brought the prison right back to him.
Ash Palmisciano has said that the experience in the prison will permanently change Matty: ’I think as humans whatever happens to us in our lives always affects us,’ he told us.
‘If it’s something as traumatic as going to prison – when you’re innocent as well, that’s an important thing to think about. When you’ve been so wrongly judged and everything else, to come out of that unaffected would be really rare so there is going to be an impact on his life going forward and it’s going to change how he is.
‘It’s also going to teach him a lot of resilience. I think he’s already got a bit of resilience about him. He’s obviously the only trans character in the village and he’s had to go through quite a lot to get to where he is anyone. So adding this experience to him, it’s really exciting to think about what character he’s going to become.’
