Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Emmerdale Far
lunches in. On set once somebody touches something, filming has to stop and they have to wipe it down before someone else touches it.
“Brad accidentally touched a bottle that I had touched and we had to stop so he could go off to be disinfected!
“We now have a two-metre bamboo stick so the directors can check the distance between me, Brad and the cameraman. The rules are so strict and there isn’t anything they haven’t thought of. Even when we go to the loo, where there are eight cubicles, it’s now one in, one out.”
The major challenge for Lisa has not been learning the huge number of lines involved for a whole episode with just her and Vinny on screen – but getting to grips with Mandy Dingle’s larger-than-life hair and make-up singlehandedly.
“Mandy’s hair and make-up is a challenge,” she admits. “Our hair and make-up team are amazing! I’ve never put false lashes on in my life, and Mandy and her lashes are like spaghetti and bolognese – you can’t have one without the other.
“So I’ve had to persevere and do it. Mandy’s wigs are huge and I now have to fit them myself, so I apologise if she doesn’t look quite herself.”
While Lisa brushed up on her hairdressing skills, Nicola, 46, took a different route – choosing not to wash her hair for seven weeks. She thought lockdown would be the perfect time to embrace nature and see if her hair would eventually clean itself.
But she says: “As much as I love nature, this didn’t work for me. My husband said it smelt like old biscuits.
“I wanted to see if it would start to self-clean – but I learned it would never do that.
“It was all about getting my scalp back to its natural state and every fortnight I’d use apple cider vinegar on it.
“But I’d then get dandruff for two days, then I’d have one day of it looking nice and then it would go back to being greasy. So I had to wash it before I went back to work. My husband said I looked like a wilding out of Game of Thrones.”
Nicola felt confident returning due to the safety measures put in place.
She says: “It’s very strange when you come in and you have your temperature checked. And I get hay fever, so I feel like if I sneeze people might think I’m ill and start spraying me with bleach. But I felt really safe going back to work. Emmerdale have been really on it and have put so many measures in place to keep us safe.”
One thing Nicola will not miss now that she is back filming is homeschooling. She admits: “I am a terrible teacher. I’m OK if we’re outside doing walks and looking at nature, but sitting down trying to teach a fiveyear-old English and maths is not easy.
“I think it was about week seven he let me know I wasn’t a good teacher – he didn’t hold back. I now think teachers deserve medals.”
Emmerdale is on Monday, Wednesday and Friday next week, ITV.
ON THE SAFETY MEASURES