Gaynor Faye reveals unexpected Emmerdale romance that nearly happened

Megan Macey was a force to be reckoned with in Emmerdale.

Gaynor Faye portrayed the fierce femme fatale, who’s tenure in the Yorkshire Dales was marked by the drama within her fractured family, a painfully enduring feud with Charity Dingle (Emma Atkins) and the painful losses of her love, Frank Clayton (Michael Praed) and son, Robbie Lawson (Jamie Shelton).

In a chat with Zingo Bingo, Gaynor reminisced about her time on the show: ‘Emmerdale was great for me. I never thought I’d do another soap after Corrie but Emmerdale’s in my hometown, it’s Leeds.

As it turns out, Gaynor wasn’t brought in to fit the role of Megan, rather, Megan was created especially for the actress.

‘This role came up because the producer at the time created the role for me, which was lovely because I went out for a different role. They were like, ‘That’s not right for you, we’ll create a role,’ so I ended up being Jason Merrell’s sister in the big house.

‘It was lovely because I went into Home Farm, and I had all these amazing outfits because I was a businesswoman.’

‘That was great fun, the fact that she was straight in as a bit of a baddie. Anyone who’s in the big house is a bit of a baddie. So yeah, I loved it.’

As mentioned, a huge chunk of Megan’s DNA was her unwavering hatred for Charity, the village’s premier bad girl. When asked about their feud, Gaynor said: ‘That was great fun. I poured paint over her head, we had all sorts of fights, and we had punches in the ballpark – it was just really good fun.’

On her relationship with the rest of the cast? ‘To be honest with you, it’s like a family. I know it’s a cliche, but it really is, because everyone’s very happy in their work. I mean, it certainly was like that when I was there.

‘Everybody just wanted to make really good TV and have fun with it. We had some great directors, some really good writers, a really good production team, and some fab actors.’

Naturally, we were intrigued as to whether Gaynor had any ‘behind the scenes’ tea from her soap tenure, and she didn’t half deliver!

‘There was a talk of me and another character having a relationship, me and Harriet [Finch (Katherine Dow Blighton)].

‘It’s not a case of, suddenly they turned their sexuality. It’s a case of you just falling in love with somebody. It would be good to see more storylines like that.’

Gaynor’s not only an ex-resident of Emmerdale, she’s also done time in Weatherfield. She appeared as Judy Mallett in Coronation Street between 1995 and 1999 before her alter-ego died of a blood clot.

With former (and even current) Corrie stars, including Sally Ann Matthews and Maureen Lipman alongside viewers complaining about the shows recent heavy focus on crime, Gaynor was asked how she feels things on the cobbles are.

‘It’s very difficult because obviously with soaps they’re trying to cater to what viewers want. What people want now is fast action, everyone seems to be wanting to watch crime dramas and true crime.

‘I know what’s happening with the soaps, they’re wanting to keep up because obviously there’s a need and there’s a thirst from the public for that.

‘I also think we really need to be careful about doing too much of it because actually, the world is a pretty horrific place at the moment, so giving people somewhere to escape to is essential.