Former Emmerdale star Matthew Wolfenden has opened up about the real reason he quit the soap, admitting the decision seemed ‘a little crazy’.
The actor left his role as David Metcalfe in 2023 after more than 17 years.
Fans of the ITV soap saw the broken-hearted character leave the village for London after learning of Jacob Gallagher’s (Joe-Warren Plant) relationship with his ex Victoria Sugden (Isabel Hodgins).
Matthew has now revealed he chose to leave the show after landing the opportunity to appear in a stage production of Elf over Christmas, which he’d have been unable to do if he was still part of the Emmerdale cast.
peaking to The Sun, he said: ‘The problem is they don’t let people out at Christmas to do panto, because their reasoning is if we left one person out, we’ve got to open it up to everyone and we could lose half our cast at Christmas.
‘Not that Elf was a pantomime, it was a big West End musical, but it was over panto season and they said if we set a precedence to let you out for three months to do that we’ve got to let other people out too. And I absolutely understood that.
‘My contract was coming to an end and I had this big decision to make, do I leave an 18-year job to do an eight-week show?
‘When you look back, in hindsight, to leave a well-paid job to go and do an eight-week run is a little crazy.
‘I’m 44 now, I was 43 at the time and I thought if I don’t do it now then I’ll never do it,’ he added.
Matthew revealed that one of the soap’s big bosses John Whiston emailed him to tell him that David would not be killed off and the door would remain open for him to return.
The actor refused to rule out the possibility of returning to the Dales one day, calling it a ‘great place to work’ where the people ‘are fantastic’.
He added: ‘I absolutely adored it and it had nothing to do with the fact that I wasn’t enjoying it anymore, it was just that I wanted to go out and spread my wings and do some more musical theatre.’
Matthew, who had a background in musical theatre before being cast as David in Emmerdale in 2006, has since appeared in a panto production of Jack and The Beanstalk in Sunderland over Christmas.
He also made a return to screens in Channel 5’s hit drama The Good Ship Murder, alongside former Coronation Street stars Shayne Ward and Catherine Tyldesley and ex Hollyoaks actor Ross Adams.
