Charley Webb doesn’t think her ‘Emmerdale’ alter ego Debbie Dingle will "cope well" in prison.
The 30-year-old actress’ character has confessed to police about her involvement in Ross Barton’s acid attack and she thinks the mechanic would struggle behind bars as she’ll find it tough being apart from her kids.
She said: "She’d go to prison for a long time and her kids would be outside so not great, and it would be for something that wasn’t really her fault so it would be a bigger kick in the teeth. So she would not cope well."
And Charley hopes her character doesn’t get punished too harshly for the attack – which saw Ross (Michael Parr) mistaken for the intended target, Joe Tate (Ned Porteous) – as she didn’t ask Simon McManus (Liam Ainsworth) to use acid.
She told Metro.co.uk: "That story has been a bit muddled and confused, she never ordered the acid, the acid was just something that that guy did even though she did just want Joe to get beaten up for what he’d done. That’s a very Dingle thing to do – the Dingles get people beaten up all the time and her dad is Cain, it’s natural territory for her for that to happen.
"But obviously it did go really wrong with the acid."
Now that Simon has been arrested and Debbie has confessed, Charley hopes the storyline can be "put to bed" for her alter ego.
She said: "I am glad that it’s out because I would quite like to put that story to bed now for that character because it should never really have been about Debbie, it should’ve been what happened to Ross, and she was just unfortunately part of that, she didn’t actually order the acid so I do think it’s quite a difficult one.
"A lot of people said ‘Do you think she should’ve gone down for it?’ No, but had she said, ‘yes can you throw acid in his face?’ then yes, I’d want her to have her comeuppance 100%."
Charley Webb doesn’t think Debbie can cope with jail
