Emmerdale producer Iain MacLeod has said that he never considered a more dramatic ending to Ashley Thomas's long-running storyline.
Fans have been dreading Ashley's exit ever since he was diagnosed with dementia in late 2015, which led to the confirmation that he'd be leaving the ITV soap at the end of the storyline.
Recent Emmerdale episodes have seen Ashley's health take a sudden turn for the worse after he collapsed in the care home, leaving his family devastated as they learned he wouldn't recover this time.
Discussing Ashley's exit at an Emmerdale press event today (April 4), Iain admitted that he was never tempted to take a more sensationalist route – insisting that his priority has always been to tell the story as truthfully as possible.
When asked if a more dramatic ending was considered, Iain said: "Not really, to be honest. We have fairly vocal writers on this issue and Linton Chiswick – who wrote the episode – has always been a good arbiter of how far you should go.
"Evidently, it's a soap, so there needs to be some concession to drama, but equally, it's an experience that so many people are going through that it would have cheapened it. We always applied a high benchmark to it in terms of not sensationalising it.
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"Obviously, in my line of work, it's tempting to be quite soapy with things – and normally that is totally my bag – but with this story, if we ever veered too close to that, we were always quick to censor ourselves for thinking that way and tried to bring it back to being as truthful as we could."
Emmerdale isn't revealing the exact details of Ashley's last episodes, but it has been confirmed that he will share a tender moment with Laurel before he passes away – as he remembers her for the first time in months.
Emmerdale will air Ashley's final episode on Friday, April 7 at 7pm on ITV.
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