You Ask… Dean Andrews (who plays Will Taylor)
Emmerdale’s Will Taylor ...faces your questions!
“How much are you into keeping fit?”
Will’s life has been ruined by harbouring secrets – but as we put your questions to Dean, he reveals that his life is worlds away from his alter ego’s…
“Would you have liked to be the one to bump off evil Malone?”
I think Will would have preferred it that way. He could have protected his daughter, and Harriet at the same time. And Will obviously really didn’t like Malone, so it might have been nice for him to get his own back. But it wasn’t to be – though I would have liked Will to have bumped him off. I do miss Mark [Womack, aka Malone]
– he was such a great addition to the cast!
“Now that Will has split from Harriet, is there anyone else in the village who might make a good match for him?”
Well, there aren’t too many women around my age. There’s Kim and Wendy. But the likes of Chas and Charity are about 10 years younger than me, if not more. There’s not an awful lot of choice – maybe Bob and Will could have a bromance!
“Which past character would you most like to go back and play again?”
It would probably be going back to Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes, playing Raymondo again. But that’s my staple answer, and will always be top of the tree. However, I did play a character named Barry in a Channel 4 drama called Buried, which was a prison drama. It had one series, won a Bafta, and got cancelled! They were going to make my character the focal point of the second series – that’s probably why they cancelled it!
“Who has been your favourite ever co-star?”
Emmerdale aside, I would say Keeley Hawes. She’s a great actress. We did three seasons together on Ashes To Ashes, and got on so well. We still message every month to say “Hi”, and comment on what we’re doing on TV. I really miss Keeley, she’s a lovely lady. I’m so pleased for how well she’s doing – suddenly everyone’s going, “Oh, my God, Keeley’s amazing!”, and I feel like going, “Yeah, I knew that 15 years ago!”
“Your daughter owns a fitness business – how into fitness are you?”
Well, it doesn’t look at the minute like I’m into any kind of fitness, but over the years I’ve done a lot of fitness stuff. I do a lot of cycling – I’ve done John O’Groats to Land’s End, and I did London to Paris for a leukaemia charity. But since lockdown I haven’t done
much – I want to get back into cycling but where I am in Harrogate, it’s so hilly. I’m part of a cycling club, and we average 50 miles a ride, so over a year we do 5,000 miles.
“What’s the best thing about living in Yorkshire?”
Well, I love it, it’s absolutely spot on. The little place I have up near Harrogate is stunning.
The scenery is just amazing around there, and the people are just down to earth, straight from the heart. I’m born and bred in Rotherham and never really moved, so Yorkshire can’t be too bad a place, and now
I get to work out here too.
“Which of your Emmerdale co-stars makes you laugh the most?”
Everyone has great personalities, as do most people in television. However, I think Bhasker [Patel, who plays Rishi] makes me laugh the most – his delivery on everything is great. We went on Liam Fox’s [who plays Dan] stag do in the summer, and Bhasker is just a comic genius. And he sends me messages every day that are really funny, he makes me smile a lot.
“Do you get recognised much when you’re out and about?”
I do – even more so now I’m in Emmerdale! But the character people want to talk me about is Raymondo. It’s funny with social media, as it’s taken all these years to get on to Emmerdale and be told I can’t act! I remember when I first started in Emmerdale somebody posted, “Who’s this fella? He couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag!” and somebody else replied, “Are you joking? He was on Life On Mars, Ashes To Ashes, Last Tango In Halifax” – and he’d not heard of any of them!
“What would you be doing if you weren’t an actor?”
Well, I started acting when I was 40, so I was quite late to it anyway. I was a professional singer from the age of 17 for 25 years or so. I don’t think I’d still be doing that, though, as I did go back to catering college and qualified as a chef. I didn’t want to be the singer who was still on stage when he was 55, trying to be all young and sexy!
So I went to catering college, qualified as a chef, and I started to run the catering at the golf club at the time. If I hadn’t gone into acting, I think I’d be running a fish-and-chip shop.
“Which character would you like to play again?” “Who in Emmerdale would you like to have more scenes with in 2021?”
…asks reader Sarah Jacobs from Taunton
“Can you tell us your dream holiday destination?”
I worked on cruise liners for many years, so I’ve been to a lot of places along the way. However, if somebody offered me one destination, it would be Cornwall. I just think the coastline is beautiful, and the fishing villages are gorgeous. Me and my family holiday there all the time. I’m not a hot-country type of person – I wouldn’t be choosing the Caribbean or the Seychelles.