Lucy Pargeter found it "heart-breaking" filming her toughest-ever storyline on ‘Emmerdale’.
The 43-year-old star’s character Chas Dingle and Paddy Kirk’s (Dominic Brunt) baby Grace tragically died just 20 minutes after her birth in 2018, and the actress admitted it was saddening when she found out about the hard-hitting plot.
She said: "We had a meeting initially with the producers and they said you’re going to get pregnant and then they explained the whole situation that Grace wouldn’t survive.
"It was heart-breaking to think that we were going to have to do this storyline.
"I’ve done some hard episodes in the past, but I’d say this was the top one."
But there was some baby joy for Chas and Paddy as she fell pregnant again and gave birth to daughter Eve in the Woolpack toilets.
Chas’ cousin Marlon Dingle, played by Mark Charnock, had to deliver the baby after the pair got locked in the loos, and Lucy turned director in the scenes to make them look "more real".
Speaking on ‘Emmerdale: Family Trees’, she added: "There was one scene where Marlon was supposed to be looking at the head end, and I said, ‘Can we make it more real?’
"[I said] ‘I’ll put my spanks on … get down there Mark, let me put my leg on your shoulder and let’s do it.’ "
Grace passed away after being diagnosed with bilateral renal agenesis, and Dominic admitted he had found it "impossible" to hold back the tears while he was learning his lines.
He said: "It kept taking us by surprise. We read the script and it was almost impossible to read it without bursting into tears all the time, so I kept reading it in private.
"I thought it was just me being soft, but Lucy said the same.
"Situations where you were holding a real baby who was gurgling in front of you just made it all the more real and all the more emotional."