Emmerdale’s Jeff Hordley details ‘intense and poignant’ special Zak Dingle episode as his death is announced
Emmerdale’s Dingle family are preparing to say goodbye to their legendary patriarch, Zak Dingle (Steve Halliwell), in upcoming episodes.
Beloved actor Steve Halliwell died aged 77 last year, with his family paying tribute to the ‘most amazing father and grandfather you could ever wish for,’ in a statement issued at the time. They added that ‘family was everything to him.’
Steve’s alter ego, Zak Dingle, appeared on the show regularly between 1994 and 2023 and was last seen on screen in June last year. Recently Zak has been in Scotland, staying with his granddaughter Debbie (Charley Webb). Cain Dingle (Jeff Hordley) recently travelled to visit his dad after news that Zak was unwell.
Jeff Hordley told Metro that Cain gets the sad and shocking news of Zak’s death soon after he returns to the village.
‘He’s just come back from Scotland that morning, I think, and Zak’s kind of told him to go and, you know, it’ll be fine. And he’s promised him that he won’t do too much, because his doctor said for him to rest, because he’s not been well. I think that’s why it’s so immediate for Cain, and so shocking – it’s like seeing someone in the morning, isn’t it? And then in the afternoon, they’re gone.’
The show will highlight the importance of Zak as a character and Steve as a cast member in the writing, by having Cain delivering the sad news to different members of the family as they all try to process what’s happened and what Zak means to them.
‘The way they’ve written it, there were little scenes where I had to go to various members of the Dingle family,’ Jeff recalled. ‘It was good, you know? It was a nice little piece. They react in various degrees of reacting to sad news. Nobody was expecting it.’
Following this, there’s a special episode involving Cain, Sam (James Hooton) and Belle (Eden Taylor-Draper).
‘I’m sure it’s pretty much a dedicated episode where they just stay up one night and talk about what’s going on in their lives, and relate it all to Zak, and talk about Zak as well,’ Jeff said.
‘It’s a really lovely episode. It reminded me a lot of the lockdown two hander episodes that we had where it’s just characters talking. It’s a bit like doing a play, it’s quite intense.’
To honour Steve, who his family said was ‘making us laugh to the end,’ these sad and intense scenes are balanced by some typical Dingle mayhem at the funeral itself, as Jeff described.
Sam and Cain go up to Scotland to bring Zak home, and the funeral takes place very soon after. The funeral has got Dingles written all over it. That’s all I can tell you, really. If you could say shotgun wedding, or shotgun funeral, you’d kind of get a picture of what it’s like.’
As they were filming, Steve was never far from their minds as the cast members who’d worked with him for so many years knew that he’d have wanted them to have some fun as they filmed the sad scenes.
‘There’s really poignant moments in it,’ Jeff said. ‘And whilst we were filming, we were all focused and giving the script everything it needed. But off camera as well – and Steve would have enjoyed this, because Steve always liked to have a giggle behind the camera – whilst we weren’t rolling, we made sure we had some laughs as well. Because when we do get together as a group, we do make sure that it’s fun to film.
‘What I’m trying to say is that the mood wasn’t just downbeat, we were making sure that we were having a laugh, and Steve wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.’
