Emmerdale star Lucy Pargeter very nearly played a completely different character on the ITV soap.
Before she bagged the role of Chas Dingle when she joined the soap over two decades ago, Lucy tried out for a completely different role - and she even managed to get into the top three for the part.
However, she is convinced she messed up her audition, meaning she was unlikely to get the role - but needless to say, bosses were actually very impressed with her and seemingly wrote a new role for her to take on, which ended up being a woman named Chas.
"I'd auditioned for a couple of parts before – one was a trucker and one was Charity. I got down to the final three for that," she explained about her almost role to Inside Soap.
"I knew James Hooton (who plays Sam Dingle) from drama classes and he said to me, 'Apparently you did something weird with your head in the audition and that put them off!', so I was like, 'Oh god!'"
She added: "Then he called me and said there was a rumour they were bringing in another Dingle woman; they wanted her to be a bit like Charity but they were thinking about my audition and writing it around that. So I knew Chas would be strong and feisty."
Lucy has many great friends on the soap's set, including Emma Atkins, who went on to play Charity Dingle.
Asked who she's closest to, she told OK! magazine: "It’s hard not to include people. Everybody in our cast has a role within our life off screen as well as on. You become really, really close with everybody. Charley Webb, who used to play Debbie Dingle, Emma Atkins, who plays Charity Dingle, Jeff Hordley, who plays my brother Cain Dingle and his real wife Zoe Henry, who plays Rhona Ghoskirk.
"Plus, Roxy Shahidi, who plays Leyla Harding, and Charlotte Bellamy, who plays Laurel Thomas. And then there’s Dominic Brunt, who plays Paddy Kirk, and Danny Miller, who played Aaron Dingle."
She also previously opened up about missing Danny on the set of the ITV soap, after he quit the role last year and went on to star in I'm A Celebrity, which he ended up winning.
"Every time I walk into work, I’m expecting him to phone me and go, 'I’m stuck on the M62, it’s absolutely rammed, can you tell them I’m going to be 10 minutes late?' she recalled.
"Or walking past his dressing room and seeing him. I’m missing him massively, but we’re on the phone all the time and I spoke to him just the other day about getting to see him, his partner Steph and their son Albert."
