Emmerdale star Beth Cordingly has opened up about her character Ruby Fox-Miligan's troubled background.
Since Ruby's explosive arrival to Emmerdale, she has made a huge impact on the village with her fiery personality and has no care in the world about who she offends with her acid tongue.
Ruby's obsession with her husband Caleb Miligan (William Ash) has seen her alienate him from his family after she discovered his affair with Tracy Robinson (Amy Walsh).
She announced their affair in front of everyone at Belle Dingle (Eden Taylor-Draper) and Tom King's (James Chase) wedding, but that wasn't the only Dingle event she destroyed in her mission for revenge.
Ruby manipulated Caleb into ruining Tracy's nursery presentation, which resulted in the whole village turning against her and Caleb. Meanwhile, Ruby had secretly joined forces with Kim Tate (Claire King) to bring down her husband.
Kim exposed Ruby's plot to Caleb, but he soon forgave her and is terrified of losing Caleb because she sees his newfound family as a threat to her marriage.
Although she has cemented herself as a powerful female character in the soap, Ruby's past is shrouded in mystery and her background has mostly been kept a secret. However, we get to finally find out more about Ruby as Beth told What To Watch the sad truth about Ruby's history which she discusses in an Emmerdale scene.
She said: "Caleb comes back annoyed saying ‘What have you done?’ I dismiss it and we start having this conversation. Nicky says, ‘Ooh, you’re talking about your past. You never talk about your past.’ And I say ‘There’s no big mystery, it is what it is.’
"Caleb’s quite sweet about it and says ‘She was made to choose,’ kind of thing. It isn’t spelled out like this but the story is I got pregnant with Nicky as a teenager with Caleb and my family made me choose. I have this line where I say ‘Things were said and we stopped talking to them.’ What I like about the way it’s been written is that Caleb has this big moment where he says ‘I’ve never really said thank you to you for all that.’
"It’s a really nice moment where she’s not expecting the way he reacts. She says ‘I chose you, I chose my family. There was no question. I did it willingly.’ She underplays it. At one point Caleb says it was his fault and maybe he should have tried harder and she’s very defensive of him. You see again her massive loyalty, you see how much she adores him. It’s one of those ‘show don’t tell’ moments where you see why she’s desperately loyal to him."
Emmerdale airs weeknights at 7.30 pm on ITV1, with a hour-long episode on Thursdays — see our TV Guide for full listings. You can also catch up on ITVX.
