There’s a busy Christmas and New Year ahead in Emmerdale for Kim Tate (Claire King), as the fan-favourite character is very much at the centre of the action over the festive period.
‘It’s good to be part of the soap weeks and Christmas and all that,’ Claire King told us. ‘It’s good. Keeps me on my toes, anyway! I have a lot of baths, with sherry, where I learn my lines.’
Viewers have seen Kim at war recently with husband Will Taylor (Dean Andrews). Starting with his infidelity with his ex, Rose Jackson (Christine Tremarco), there have been various twists and turns in the story.
We’ve seen Kim ‘blackmailing’ Will before luring him to a freshly-dug grave in a wood. We’ve seen her paying Ross Barton (Mike Parr) to get rid of him from the area and we’ve seen her trying to pay him off with £100k.
Most recently there has been a reconciliation between the two, but secretly Will is still plotting against Kim.
‘It’s War of the Roses and it has been for several weeks now,’ Claire said. ‘She does still love him but she doesn’t know that he’s kind of working behind her back, in cahoots with Kim’s financial advisor Peter (David Michaels).’
The tables turn yet again on Christmas Eve, when Kim has a riding accident and the thought of almost losing her makes Will reassess his feelings.
Claire described what happens. ’Kim goes riding on Christmas Eve. Ice rears up and gets spooked. She ends up in hospital, but Will finds her on the ground with Ice just roaming about free.
‘He has a bit of a jolt of realisation and thinks, “Actually I do love this woman. I’d better call the whole thing off. I really do love her.” They’re going to renew their vows on Christmas Day, so it’s kind of all happy back together again. He calls Peter to say it’s all off.’
That sounds like a happy-ever-after, but the story has further twists. A flash-forward sequence will show Home Farm at Christmas. While eerie music plays, we see the signs of a struggle, and a Christmas tree is laying on the ground in the middle of all the mess.
Clearly something violent has taken place – but who is the victim and who is the perpetrator? And what, exactly, has happened?
‘There’s some sort of disturbance, that’s all I can say!’ Claire teased.
What she would say is that she would very much welcome it if Kim’s ‘Killer Kim’ side resurfaced again. In recent years we’ve seen a softer side to Kim as she bonded with Dawn (Olivia Bromley) and Billy (Jay Kontzle) and their children – and Claire is just a little bit tired of the niceness.
‘She’s been nice for three years, really,’ she sighed. ‘It’s kind of “Zzzzzz. Hi kiddies! Come on, Granny takes you!” It’s like, “Ugh! I want to kill someone!”’
As to whether she could have killed Will under the Christmas tree, Claire wasn’t ruling it out.
‘She could do that to anybody, yeah,’ she speculated. ‘She loves him but she likes toying with him as well.’
