Emmerdale’s Bear Wolf will make a return to the village
Emmerdale’s Bear Wolf actor, Joshua Richards, has finally spoken out about his character’s new ‘frightening’ storyline.
Bear was last seen over three months ago, driving off in his hire car. However, recent scenes have revealed that Bear’s son, Paddy Kirk, portrayed by Dominic Brunt, discovered his father wasn’t safe in Ireland as he had assumed, but was actually missing after a long summer of absence.
With concerns over Bear’s mental state, Paddy is anxious for his father’s safety and feels guilty that they parted on bad terms. He is now seeking answers with his wife Mandy Dingle, played by Lisa Riley.
Discussing the upcoming scenes, Joshua spoke about his new storyline involving modern slavery: “Well, I found it a bit disconcerting really. I found it a bit frightening and also what experience do I have to bring to the table…
“So it was a bit discombobulating at first because I thought it could be interesting because of course Bear has been experiencing this kind of depression and confusion.”, reports the Daily Star.
“So maybe it’s a great thing to find him so vulnerable, a big strong man being vulnerable and being exploited.
“So as an actor, you just think lovely, lovely, jubbly, jubbly and rub my hands together and then pull my sleeves up to get stuck in.”
Joshua added: “It’ll be a standalone episode where we’ll have some kind of explanation of what exactly happened to him after he got in his car and drove away.
“We did see a few weeks after he’d left the village that he was still with his car and not with his friend Nasha in Ireland at all. So we will find out exactly what happened to him.”
Discussing how he prepared for the storyline, Joshua said: “I was told a few months ago, told by Laura [Shaw] our producer, that I’d be off screen for a while, that I will disappear.
“I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll get my P45 now and off I go.’ But no, they said, you’ll be coming back.
“But in the meantime, Clare Golds, makeup, said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t cut your hair and don’t shave your beard. Go raggedy.’ So I became a raggedy old man while I was off.”
He continued: “You first see Bear when he’s at the real bottom, looking really filthy and scraggly, very scraggly and unkempt. And then bit by bit, we took it away.
“As you can see, I’m almost back to where I was before. But it’s been a very complicated way of portraying various stages in Bear’s journey.”
Emmerdale continues on weekdays at 7.30pm on ITV and ITV X.
