In last night's Emmerdale episode viewers were shocked when Moira Barton discovered her daughter Holly had died.
Emmerdale fans will know that over the past few months Holly (played by Sophie Powles) has been struggling with a heroin addiction but she appeared to have recovered after secretly dating Jai Sharma.
But yesterday when Moira went to wake Holly up she discovered that she had passed away from an overdose.
In heart-breaking scenes that followed we saw the bad news spread through the rest of the village.
There were rumours that Sophie had filmed her final scenes but nothing was confirmed.
And now the 28-year-old actress has revealed that she knew her character was going to be killed off when she returned to the ITV show in March: "I always knew I was only coming back for a six-month storyline and I knew it was going to be drug-related and heart-breaking.
"I was prepared for this and I knew what I was signing up for when I spoke to the producer about returning."
Sophie also revealed why the storyline was kept top secret: "We wanted to highlight how hard and destructive drug addiction can be.
"Of course, there are many positive stories out there where people are doing really well and have recovered from drug addiction and therefore this Emmerdale storyline of course doesn’t represent everyone."
She continued: “This is Holly’s personal story. Drug addiction is shocking sometimes and you can look at someone like Holly and think she has everything sorted in life, but out of nowhere everything can spiral out of control."
We're left wondering how Moira will cope with the loss of her daughter but Sophie seems hopeful: "Moira's going to be absolutely heartbroken, but she's a lionhearted woman and she's strong and I really hope she can come back from this."
We hope so too.
And it appears that Emmerdale viewers were shocked at Holly's exit. One person wrote on Twitter: "Still in shock at last night's @emmerdale this is why storylines should be kept secret! #therealityofdrugs"
Others wrote:
"Very dramatic & moving episodes of Emmerdale tonight."
"So shocked at tonight's #emmerdale did not expect Holly to die. I was in bits and glued to TV. Well done Emmerdale"
"This is so heartbreaking, poor holly #emmerdale"
"Holly's dead. WTF"
"Holly's dead! That was a shocker, poor Moira very disturbing and sad. #Emmerdale"
Even Phillip Schofield tweeted about the episode: "Such a powerful @emmerdale… I just had to text both my daughters"
And Adam Thomas (who plays Adam Barton) has teased fans about Emmerdale's upcoming scenes. On Twitter he wrote: "By the way if you think tonight was good you haven't seen nothing yet!! Just you wait!! It's going off!!! @Emmerdale"
Eek!
Did you watch Emmerdale last night?
What was your reaction?
Let us know on Facebook or Twitter (@CloserOnline).
Emmerdale continues on ITV at 7pm.
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