Newcomer Bradley Riches has opened up about securing his Emmerdale role.
Heartstopper and Celebrity Big Brother star Bradley has joined the ITV soap as Lewis Barton, a son Emma Barton never mentioned. It makes the new face Ross’ (Michael Parr) brother and in upcoming episodes, he tries to get in contact with the family members he doesn’t know a single thing about.
Getting cast in the show happened in a pretty unique way for Bradley. Instead of simply auditioning for the role, an idea for him to join the Emmerdale family was created…at the NTAs.
Speaking about his interaction with producer Laura Shaw and the show’s casting director, actor Bradley Riches said: ‘I was at the NTAs for Celebrity Big Brother, and when we were going into the taxis on the way home, Sian [from the press team] came over and said Laura would love to have a video for her daughter.
‘So I was speaking to Laura and I asked her “What do you do on the show?” And she said “I’m the producer.” I said I’d always wanted to be in a soap. Emmerdale’s my granddad’s favourite.
He added: ‘Laura said, “This is Faye, the casting director.” They said they’d message my agent to get me in for a meeting. I thought, “Yeah, right, I bet they message my agent.” But the next week they actually did! I came in for the role of Dylan first, but then this role of Lewis Barton came up!’.
Days away from Lewis’ debut, Bradley is looking forward to the fans meeting his soap alter ego.
‘He’s quite an outgoing character’, he said.
‘He’s not afraid to say the wrong thing, but I don’t think he knows he’s saying the wrong thing sometimes. I think he’s just very straight to the point. When he first meets Ross, usually when you meet a new person you’re walking on eggshells to make sure you’re not being too much, but Lewis is straight in with all the hard questions.
‘He’s fun, he’s charismatic and he doesn’t really care what he says. I don’t think he overthinks anything, which is fun to play!’.
Joining Bradley for the chat was Mike, who admitted that Ross struggles to get his head around his brother’s arrival.
‘He’s lost so many people that he loves. There’s so many similarities between this character and Finn that he puts his walls up because he can’t emotionally afford to lose anybody else. It takes a little while for Ross to let his guard down.
‘But you’ll see that the character is quite infectious and it’s hard for Ross to say no to him because he is very pure and it reminds him of Finn. It’s been nice for Ross to have somebody on his side, because he was starting to think that he was the touch of death. Everybody he gets close to seems to get killed off.
‘He’s lost two girlfriends, four family members and he’s had a lot of unlucky situations.’
