Emmerdale’s Natalie J Robb has been reflecting on her own views on marriage amid a storyline that challenges her character’s relationship.
Natalie’s soap alter-ego Moira has been in a relationship with Cain Dingle (Jeff Hordley) for what feels like forever. Despite their many, many ups and downs, Cain and Moira manage to always find a way through their problems and stay together.
Most recently, their marriage has been impacted as a result of Moira’s brain tumour diagnosis. Prior to the life-changing news from the hospital, Moira was behaving erratically and no-one really knew why.
Due to the fact she went from flirting with Cain to arguing with him in the space of a few hours, he couldn’t help but wonder what was going on and what Moira’s mood swings meant for their relationship long-term.
Reflecting on everything Moira has been through since her diagnosis, Natalie J Robb told us recently how important she thinks it is her character and Cain stay together, no matter what they go through in this journey.
‘I had this chat with Iain MacLeod, we were talking about marriage and I said “Marriages go through things – there’s temptation, there’s things that can happen.” If everybody just gave up after the first hurdle in a marriage, people would just not get married now’, she said.
Pondering over her own views on marriage, Natalie – who was previously in a relationship with co-star Jonny McPherson – added: ‘It’s so easy to get out of marriages now. And for me, I never married because I always said if I ever did it – and I still stand by this – if I do ever do it, it’ll only ever be once.
‘That’s why I’m going to wait until I’m 79 and when I die, I’m going to be 80. I do believe that people go through problems with marriages, people change, people grow as humans and individuals. It’s quite interesting to see those things happen but you still manage to find that thing that brought you together in the first place. I don’t know, maybe I’m just a dreamer, but in my fantasy world, that’s what I’d like if it was me.
‘People who are married and who are in good marriages I think would respect that as well, rather than people just running away and going “Right, that’s it, it’s done.” Because people do go through things, affairs, financial problems, there can be lots of things that happen that can pull you apart, but things can push you together again which I think is nice to play.’
When asked about the complex dynamic between Cain and Moira, Natalie said: ‘I think they get to those points where they’re get really vulnerable with each other and go “Oooh”, both of them, and I think they’re both scared of getting hurt by the very thing that they love the most, I think a lot of it is that, we always hide from things when we’re afraid of getting hurt. I think there’s a part of that but also with Moira if she’s got a lot to protect, that’s extremely important to her as well.
‘She’ll stand up to Cain when she needs to, that’s the main thing, she always sniffs it out when she knows there’s something not right. So for the episodes to come afterwards, she’ll think hmmm. So that’ll be interesting. But I just think that Moira and Cain have a great chemistry on screen, I just do.’
She added: ‘It’s funny, sometimes when you watch it, you think “He’s my buddy, he’s like my best mate” and then you see that. Everything’s going to transpire and transpose on screen, it’s just really odd, but there’s something about that that really works.
‘I remember Gavin Blyth, god love him, we did a scene in the pub and I was with John Barton, happily married, and there was just a scene that we had to do and there was a look between Cain and Moira and he went “Right.” A year before, he said “I’m going to put those two together” and he told Jeff and I that.
‘Jeff was like, “I don’t like that change” and here was this newbie coming in, going “Hi, I’m going to mess everything up” but it’s worked out to be wonderful, and the longevity of it – I can’t remember how long they’ve been married for now, must be 7, 8 or 9 years, it’s not bad.
‘We’ve threatened divorce once or twice but we didn’t quite get there either!’
