There’s absolute agony ahead for Cain Dingle (Jeff Hordley) in Emmerdale as he has to deal with his prostate cancer diagnosis and the

daunting prospect of treatment. At the same time, his wife Moira Dingle (Natalie J Robb) is arrested for the murders of Celia Daniels (Jaye Griffiths) and Anya (Alia Al-Shabibi) after their bodies are found on her land.

 

 

When Cain visits Moira in prison he’s rattled when he sees she has a black eye and is clearly going through a bad time. Unable to help her, he makes the tough decision to not add to her suffering by telling her the news about his health.

‘He can see she’s struggling to deal with what’s going on inside there, so he feels that to burden her with the honesty of his diagnosis wouldn’t be the right thing to do,’ Jeff Hordley explained. ‘So he decides, for better or for worse, it’s best not to tell Moira.’

Cain’s shock diagnosis of cancer came during the Corriedale crossover episode. He was shot as Robert Sugden fought with his brother John for control of a shotgun, and a scan in hospital revealed something worse – a ‘sizeable mass’ that could be cancer.

When tests confirm that diagnosis and Cain learns that the treatment will have some serious side effects, the resulting isolation that Cain feels in this situation as he feels unable to tell Moira is explored in a special episode which literally focuses entirely on Cain.

‘They came up with this idea where it’s about the camera being focused on him,’ Jeff explained. ‘Everybody else is in soft focus. You occasionally hear the thoughts in his head. It was a really exciting episode to be part of.

‘Nobody else in the episode knows what’s going on. We see him through the journey of a day, including going to the hospital to get the news from the doctor about what the state of his cancer is, to leaving there and walking back to the village, to working at the garage. It’s just a really lovely episode. You get to see somebody dealing with this, and wanting to work it all out and how they’re going to deal with it.’

The prostate cancer storyline was, Jeff told us, conceived as ‘The story of a man who doesn’t normally talk about his feelings. It’s bad enough having cancer but the possible side effects of this particular illness are really damaging to males and their egos. Having to talk about that and confront it is, I think, where we want to go down.’

He insisted that, alongside this, the entire situation is ‘a big love story’ between Moira and Cain.

‘That was underpinning all this. How they get all these adverse challenges and how they deal with them – Moira being inside prison, Cain being told he’s got this illness and how bad it is.’

When asked whether their current ordeals could break Cain and Moira’s marriage apart or make them stronger, Jeff said he genuinely didn’t know – and it could go either way.

‘I think that’s what’s good about this story, for Cain and Moira,’ he reflected. ‘There’s a series of obstacles and hurdles that lay in front of them that I think are really going to challenge them as a couple. As to whether it makes or breaks them, I don’t think I even know just yet but it’s going to be really interesting to see.’

He mentioned one scene in particular that he’d just filmed with Natalie J Robb that will be pivotal as to how their relationship plays out as the storyline continues.

‘In all the years I’ve done Emmerdale I’ve never done one as long as this. I think it was 12 minutes in the end. It’s a really important scene within this particular story and I think it’s a great Cain and Moira scene. Fingers crossed for that one but it was a challenge and a joy to do.’

There’s absolute agony ahead for Cain Dingle (Jeff Hordley) in Emmerdale as he has to deal with his prostate cancer diagnosis and the daunting prospect of treatment. At the same time, his wife Moira Dingle (Natalie J Robb) is arrested for the murders of Celia Daniels (Jaye Griffiths) and Anya (Alia Al-Shabibi) after their bodies are found on her land.

When Cain visits Moira in prison he’s rattled when he sees she has a black eye and is clearly going through a bad time. Unable to help her, he makes the tough decision to not add to her suffering by telling her the news about his health.

‘He can see she’s struggling to deal with what’s going on inside there, so he feels that to burden her with the honesty of his diagnosis wouldn’t be the right thing to do,’ Jeff Hordley explained. ‘So he decides, for better or for worse, it’s best not to tell Moira.’

Cain’s shock diagnosis of cancer came during the Corriedale crossover episode. He was shot as Robert Sugden fought with his brother John for control of a shotgun, and a scan in hospital revealed something worse – a ‘sizeable mass’ that could be cancer.

When tests confirm that diagnosis and Cain learns that the treatment will have some serious side effects, the resulting isolation that Cain feels in this situation as he feels unable to tell Moira is explored in a special episode which literally focuses entirely on Cain.

‘They came up with this idea where it’s about the camera being focused on him,’ Jeff explained. ‘Everybody else is in soft focus. You occasionally hear the thoughts in his head. It was a really exciting episode to be part of.

‘Nobody else in the episode knows what’s going on. We see him through the journey of a day, including going to the hospital to get the news from the doctor about what the state of his cancer is, to leaving there and walking back to the village, to working at the garage. It’s just a really lovely episode. You get to see somebody dealing with this, and wanting to work it all out and how they’re going to deal with it.’

The prostate cancer storyline was, Jeff told us, conceived as ‘The story of a man who doesn’t normally talk about his feelings. It’s bad enough having cancer but the possible side effects of this particular illness are really damaging to males and their egos. Having to talk about that and confront it is, I think, where we want to go down.’

He insisted that, alongside this, the entire situation is ‘a big love story’ between Moira and Cain.

‘That was underpinning all this. How they get all these adverse challenges and how they deal with them – Moira being inside prison, Cain being told he’s got this illness and how bad it is.’

When asked whether their current ordeals could break Cain and Moira’s marriage apart or make them stronger, Jeff said he genuinely didn’t know – and it could go either way.

‘I think that’s what’s good about this story, for Cain and Moira,’ he reflected. ‘There’s a series of obstacles and hurdles that lay in front of them that I think are really going to challenge them as a couple. As to whether it makes or breaks them, I don’t think I even know just yet but it’s going to be really interesting to see.’

He mentioned one scene in particular that he’d just filmed with Natalie J Robb that will be pivotal as to how their relationship plays out as the storyline continues.

‘In all the years I’ve done Emmerdale I’ve never done one as long as this. I think it was 12 minutes in the end. It’s a really important scene within this particular story and I think it’s a great Cain and Moira scene. Fingers crossed for that one but it was a challenge and a joy to do.’