Emmerdale star confirms return of jailed character – and it’s not Matty
Emmerdale star Rebecca Bakes has confirmed when her character Angelica King will return to the ITV soap.
At the start of the year, Angelica, Cathy (Gabrielle Dowling) and Heath Hope (Sebastian Dowling) were involving in a car accident after trying to joyride into town for a New Year’s party.
As Wendy (Susan Cookson) and Bob (Tony Audenshaw) arrived at the scene, it wasn’t long until Wendy realised Heath wasn’t able to be saved due to the severity of his injuries.
As Bob and Cathy dealt with the sudden loss of Heath, Cathy also had to try and convince her dad that she wasn’t behind the wheel when the crash happened.
After Heath’s funeral, Angelica finally confessed to mum Nicola (Nicola Wheeler) that Cathy had been telling the truth all along. In March, Angelica made her way to court and was sentenced to a secure children’s home for a very lengthy eight months.
As Nicola and Jimmy (Nick Miles) have adapted to their life in the village without Angel, we have also been given a few updates on how she’s getting on at the home in Bristol. Initially, the King parents spoke about Angelica getting bullied by other children but now, we know she’s regularly ‘playing up’ and her attitude is ‘driving them [the adults] up the wall’.
Suffice to say these developments have been a surprise for Jimmy and Nicola, who know Angelica as a shy young girl who had never really been in trouble until this ordeal at the start of the year.
They will have a lot on their plate when she eventually returns to the village and thanks to actress Rebecca Bakes, we know we’ll be seeing her character fairly soon.
‘It should be at the end of September’, she teased during a chat with Digital Spy at the Radio Times Soap Awards.
‘So in a few months maybe! I don’t really know because we haven’t started filming anything yet.’
![Angelica stands in front of baby Esther's pram in Emmerdale](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/SEI_212924156-1bf6.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&zoom=1&resize=540%2C303)
‘Before we even started filming it, we were told that the driver would be me and they kept us updated. It was really exciting because I’d never previously done anything as big.’
Life has been considerably quieter for Jimmy and Nicola since Angelica’s departure. In May, the couple had some light relief when the day of the village fete arrived.
As expected, Nicola took it upon herself to organise most of the event, and was moved when Jimmy presented her with a megaphone.
The scenes also aired during Emmerdale’s 10,000th episode.
To celebrate this, the show thanked the local community for its endless support by helping with the maintenance of 10000 trees.
Head of Production Nader Mabadi explained how they are swapping the Woolpack for the Woodland:
‘Our Studios and Village are a large part of the community, helping us beam the beautiful Yorkshire Dales to countries across the world, and all of us on the team are grateful to the Leeds and the wider Yorkshire communities for their continued support over the last 52 years of filming Emmerdale in the region.
‘With this in mind we thought a great way to celebrate our 10 000 milestone would be to pay that support forward, by making a sustainable contribution to the local environment in helping with the woodland project near to our village.’