Viv Hardwick talks to Christopher Villiers, Paul Opacic and Helen Weir about their days in TV soap Emmerdale as the trio arrive to promote Darlington Civic Theatre’s tenth anniversary summer season.

CHRISTOPHER Villiers has just left long-running ITV1 soap Emmerdale as baddie,Grayson Sinclair, while Paul Opacic departed nine years ago as “legendary” playboy Steve Marchant. Veteran actress Helen Weir recalls the days when she played Pat Sugden on Emmerdale Farm in the early Eighties.

All three speak with affection of the Yorkshire-set soap which made them familiar faces to millions and first choice for Ian Dickens when it came to casting his tenth summer season for Darlington Civic Theatre, Villiers has the aristocratic role of younger brother David Roddingham in the largely unknown Frederick Knott murdery mystery, Write Me A Murder, with Opacic as womanising older brother Clive and Weir as wily family doctor Elizabeth Woolley – in a tale of inheritance which also stars ex-EastEnder Leslie Grantham.

“Frederick Knott only wrote three plays – the others being Dial M For Murder and Wait Until Dark with the film rights currently owned by Quentin Tarrantino – and the other two were internationally acclaimed.

This is as good and all about a stately home with a clash of the classes as part of the mystery. This isn’t precious but actually a play for everyone,” Villiers explains.

It’s been 12 years since he was on the stage and he says: “I think I was a bit scared too and I thought I was going to do Chicago in the West End as Billy Flynn but decided to do Life X Three by Yasmina Reza before taking on all that singing and dancing. Then I thought ‘working with a live audience instead of a cold camera is fun’.”

Theatre offers followed three films he’s shot after leaving Emmerdale in September last year and the five-part TV series, Collision, which will be shown on ITV in the autumn.

“Collision is the ripple effect of a road accident where people’s lives get sidetracked by this incident. I’m a baddie, and baddies always have more fun. Let’s face it, if you speak well you have to be a baddie in Emmerdale because the salt of the earth Yorkshireman can’t be a baddie. You can be a crook, like the Dingles, but you can’t be a baddie,”

says Villiers who reckons that having Linda Thorson as a mother and living in a big house automatically makes you a crook.

So did he mind becoming Emmerdale’s “bent lawyer”, the man prepared to cheat on his wife, Perdy, and have affairs with both sexes?

Villiers laughs at the description and says: “It was fun actually and never say never. There’s a chance I may go back, the door’s open and I’d like to see how the story goes.

Previously I’d had a fabulous wife and then had a relationship with Paul Lambert, the barman, but ended up living with Katie Sugden, played by one of the cutest girls on television. Going to work and having to kiss Sammy Winward was a chore beyond chores, but someone had to do it,” he jokes.

Villiers agrees that he had a fantastic rollercoaster of storylines over his three years on Emmerdale which ended in a blaze of gunfire, hostage-taking and being carted off by the police. Somehow he managed to fit in the soap alongside running a celebrity cricket team, launching one of the UK’s largest extras agencies, 2020, and creating his own film scripts – Two Men Went To War, based on a true story, about two dentists who invaded France during the Second World War, starring Kenneth Cranham, Leo Bill and Derek Jacobi, ran on BBC2 on Saturday.

“It’s thanks to Emmerdale I’m doing this play because Ian (Dickens) wanted people with a TV profile,” he explains.

PAUL Opacic’s profile stretches from Emmerdale in 1996-99 to central roles in TV’s Bad Girls and The Chase.

As Steve Marchant he arrived in a blaze of fast cars and faster women but adds: “It was time to go when my character finished up emasculated and dominated by Kim Tate and then got banged up for ten years for murder.

I don’t think it worked with my jack-the-lad character becoming subservient. You always need someone like that in soaps. That’s why they’ve brought back Cain Dingle at the moment.”

Opacic is concerned about ITV’s current financial woes which are likely to result in fewer drama series being made and the growth of celebrity culture through overreliance on reality shows.

“I can’t bear the idea of being called a celebrity these days because it’s now seems to be a term for being talentless and famous for being famous,” he says.

The actor hasn’t appeared on stage since 2000 and jokes: “I was beginning to think it was something I’d said. In this play I’m the older brother, Clive, and I’m a typical example of being first in line by being more interested in the ski slopes and womanising.”

He’s moved back to home town Halifax and bemoans the demise of his local football team into the Unibond League. “The reason I use the term ‘legendary’ in my press notes is that the club called me ‘the legendary Steve Marchant in Emmerdale’ in its programme, which was fantastic,” he says.

HELEN Weir was married to on-screen husband Clive Hornby, who died last year while still playing the role of Jack Sugden. The couple divorced offscreen nine years ago and had a son, Thomas.

She took over the role of Pat Sugden for six years from 1980 and has fond memories of Toke Townley, who played Sam Pearson for 12 years.

“It’s been a long time since I was in it and I’m not saying it was better or worse, but it was definitely about the country. I was brought up in Yorkshire on Ilkley Moor and I loved working with the animals and, as Pat Sugden, I’d have my arm inside a cow bringing out a calf.

“But I did also have to be seen milking and the cows were always treading on my toes and virtually sitting on me while I was sitting on a three-legged stool.

“Clive was one of the mainstays of the programme and I think it was wonderful he was in the series for so long. His character went through so many trials and tribulations. He had so many ladies and actually had a lady friend before my character. In fact my character’s name was Ruth before I came into it and then it was changed to Pat. I think the way they held the funeral for Jack in Emmerdale was the most delicate way they could handle his death,”

says Weir.

Her character departed the series in 1986 after fatally swerving her car to avoid sheep on the road. “When people see me they say ‘when are you coming back?’ and I reply ‘I can’t because I went over the hill in my car’. It is quite strange filming your own demise,” Weir says.

She was attracted to Write Me A Murder “because it’s a classic thriller and exactly the kind of thing that I’d pay to go and watch myself”.

■ Darlington Civic Theatre’s tenth anniversary summer repertory season by Ian Dickens Productions includes: June 9-13, Rattle Of A Simple Man, starring Hannah Waterman and Huw Higginson; June 16-20, Killing Time, a thriller by Richard Stockwell also starring Waterman and Higginson; June 23-27, Write Me A Murder; June 30-July 4, Philip King farce Pools Paradise. Tickets: £12.50-£17.50.

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