Fiona Wade found it "very difficult" to get into the headspace of her ‘Emmerdale’ character having "pregorexia" – because she "eats all the time".
The 40-year-old actress’ alter-ego Priya Sharma admits it was tough to understand the condition – where women try to control their pregnancy weight gain through exercise and extreme dieting – because she has grown up watching her mum "eat everything".
She said: "I’m from a Filipino family, so food is very much – it’s social. It’s what we do. We eat all the time. My mum is constantly cooking.
"For me, being a child, I saw my mum eat everything and I ate what they ate, so it was very difficult for me in terms of getting my head into a different space.
"Now that I understand it more, I see how these things can derive from anxiety, OCD, perfectionism, stress."
In this week’s ‘Emmerdale’, Priya will find it tough to get through a meal at Home Farm as her character’s pregorexia plot, which first emerged in 2014 when Priya was expecting Amba, is revisited.
And Fiona admits she has "so much compassion" for people who are suffering from the condition since she has researched it for the soap.
She said: "Back in 2014, I didn’t know much about anorexia, really. And I definitely hadn’t heard of pregorexia, which is what Priya developed.
"I had a very healthy relationship with food growing up, and recognising that anorexia is a mental illness and it’s serious and so sad, I have so much compassion for it now."
What’s more, Fiona admits he keeps the condition in the back of her mind while playing out Priya’s other plots.
Speaking on ‘Loose Women’, she added: "Even when my character is doing other storylines, it’s in the back of my head and the writers.
"With any mental illness, you have to keep working on these things so it’s an ongoing process."
Fiona Wade’s ‘difficult’ Emmerdale storyline
