Emmerdale's Marlon Dingle actor Mark Charnock has revealed all on his character's health battle on the ITV soap, saying it will be a long time before he's back to himself.
The character will face terror next week on the soap when he suffers a stroke, and is rushed to hospital.
He's found collapsed by his young daughter April, before he is raced in for emergency surgery.
But the character faces a "long journey" ahead with his recovery, and will rely on those around him for support.
Speaking to The Mirror and other press, actor Mark confessed that while he wasn't "worried" about the change to his character long-term, he did feel the pressure to do the plot as accurately as possible.
Mark revealed what was ahead for Marlon in the days and weeks following his stroke, and the huge changes to the character and his family's lives.
He told us: "He has a thrombectomy and they drag the clot out and it's only the beginning of the story really. It helps with his facial drooping in the first instance, but he's still got a very long journey about learning how to speak and all that stuff again.
"It's all down his right side and so his arm, his leg and his mouth are all quite badly affected, so he has trouble. He goes through phases.
"He's got a phase where it affects his speech and being able to express himself properly."
Mark went on: "In the first few episodes there's words he just can't get to, so he often makes mistakes with words.
"He can see what he wants to say but he can't express it so he either goes to the wrong word or can't say it, so he's got all that to contend with.
"Communicating with people, he's in a wheelchair because his right side is not operational so it’s a mountain to climb, but for Marlon in particular because he is such a mouthy character, he’s a visibly expressive person and it's reducing him down to his eyes really, which is how he expresses himself in the first few days or weeks."
Mark shared his hopes the twist will inspire his character to get his life back as he recovers, and added there would be some comedy in the plot too.
He revealed: "I don't think he’s going to get to where he wants to be for a long time, and we're just at the beginning of his journey.
"He can't work anymore, and he feels, wrongly, that he can't be the dad he wants to be anymore, which is everything to him, because of his incapacitation.
"But because of Rhona and Paddy and other characters who come into this story who are a big support, there's some comedy in it too, there's some fun to be had in it and some lovely scenes with Paddy, really funny and well written in the hospital quite early on.
"There’s a great deal of hope that things can only get better from where they are, there’s positivity to be had from it too so hopefully apart from it being distressing, traumatic for the characters, also it will inspire them to get their lives back.
"And hopefully it will inspire the people watching to maybe change their lifestyles a little bit in order to head this off before it happens to them – because it happens to so many people."
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Emmerdale airs weeknights at 7:30pm on ITV, with an hour-long episode on Thursdays.
