Emmerdale star Beth Cordingly has responded to comparisons between her character Ruby Fox-Miligan and Kim Tate.
Ruby arrived in the village earlier this year, and has been feeling insecure about her complicated relationship with husband Caleb – who embarked on an affair with Tracy Robinson – as well as his attempts to connect with the Dingles.
As such, she has been making enemies of Caleb's family, with some even suggesting that she bears some comparisons to the villainous Kim Tate.
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Speaking about her relationship with the Dingles, Beth said to Digital Spy and other media that "it’s definitely not how to make friends and influence people".
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"That is not a life skill she’s learned! It’s quite frustrating when you get the scripts because you just think, ‘Oh my God, she’s just rude to everybody’," she said, explaining that as an actor "you have to find your own logic through it".
"The only way I can see it is that it seems with her that her best form of defence is attack. She’s very impulsive and spontaneous, she seems to speak and act without thinking."
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Addressing the Kim comparisons, Beth added: "I don’t think she’s anything like Kim Tate because Kim is very cool and calculated and Ruby just reacts to stuff very fierily and then is quite often full of regret afterwards.
"So the only way I can justify her behaviour is that she’s terrified of losing him so she sees his family as a threat.
"But instead of being clever about it and befriending them she keeps insulting them and kicking out against them, which is obviously not going to help – definitely not with the Dingles, and not with Caleb either because he can’t understand why she can’t get on board.
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"It’s a very childish way of approaching stuff, but the only way I can justify it is she didn’t learn that sophistication, she’s kind of stuck in that teenage thinking of having a family turn their back on her and she’s kind of stuck. She’s never learned about the art of diplomacy."
Speaking further about Caleb's affair with Tracy, Beth noted that "whenever they’re not together he has quite often gone and had flings", though Ruby is "very threatened by the fact that she sensed that he was potentially falling in love with Tracy".
"I think before it hasn’t really bothered her," she said. "They don’t have an open relationship, it’s always been when they’ve split up, I think. He’s had a line in the past where he’s said ‘You’ve done things, I’ve done things’, so they’ve both strayed but she absolutely adores him.
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"Kim Tate says to her, ‘You don’t just love Caleb – you’re obsessed with him’. It’s not an obsession like a Fatal Attraction-type thing, I don’t think. She’s given up everything for him in her eyes."
She added: "They are everything and it’s sort of fear-based as well, in that if she loses them she loses everything. So it’s that need as well. So it’s family, they are everything to each other – they are mother, father, sister, brother, lover, the whole thing. She’s definitely still in love with him, even after everything with Tracy. Deeply, deeply. She can’t let him go."
As for whether Ruby and Caleb will be together forever, the star replied: "I don’t know – that’s up to the scriptwriters. But I think she can’t see a world without him in it. They’re everything."
Emmerdale airs on weeknights at 7.30pm on ITV1, and streams on ITVX.
