Emmerdale star Danny Miller admits fears for Aaron’s future in the show
"Please don't kill me off!"
Emmerdale spoilers follow.
Emmerdale star Danny Miller has revealed that he was scared about his character Aaron Dingle’s future in the show amid the family’s new storyline.
Aaron’s mum Chas is currently being treated for breast cancer, and in recent weeks she has told her family that she carries the faulty BRCA2 gene, which has caused her illness.
As a result, there was the potential for Aaron, as well as Chas’s brothers Cain and Caleb, to also carry the faulty gene and to pass it on to their own children – so the three men got tested.
In scenes that will air on Monday, March 18, Cain and Caleb both receive negative results, while Aaron discovers that he has inherited the faulty BRCA2 gene – though he lies to Chas and claims he tested negative.
Speaking to Digital Spy and other press, Miller admitted that he feared what might happen to his character when he was first told about the important storyline.
“We got given some research on the faulty BRCA2 gene and it’s a very interesting and untold story as far as I know, in terms of Emmerdale and soap in general.
“I honestly thought: ‘Oh no, I’ve just moved to Leeds, please don’t kill me off!’ But no, I think in life – I can be like that sometimes, actually – you can have people that just have bad luck and bad luck follows them. I think I kind of knew what they were going to say when they said it, that the three of them take the test. I said: ‘It’s me that gets it, isn’t it?’”
While a faulty BRCA2 gene raises Aaron’s risk of developing male breast cancer and prostate cancer, it doesn’t guarantee that he will get the disease.
However, this will be a new part of Aaron’s character going forward and is something that Miller would be interested to explore in the future.
“I don’t know whether they’re going to explore it,” he said. “They certainly haven’t told me if they are. It sets in that there’s the potential that it could trigger [in] Aaron, that he at some point would have to deal with that side of things.
“But it’s naïve of me to not think about male breast cancer. I spoke to a couple of other people here, males, and they didn’t know about it so it would be an interesting story to play and I think it’s difficult to not think that it’ll be something that’ll come at some time.”
Miller added: “I’d be interested in playing that story and hopefully he gets over it.”
Emmerdale airs on weeknights at 7.30pm on ITV1, and streams on ITVX.
