Emmerdale star Natalie Ann Jamieson says she had to repeat filming her death scenes due to crying and being an “emotional wreck”.
Following a limo crashing into a frozen lake on the Yorkshire-set ITV soap, Jamieson’s character Amy Barton dies on Thursday after briefly regaining consciousness.
She manages to say goodbye to her son Kyle (Huey Quinn), along with attempting to explain to her husband Matty Barton, played by Ash Palmisciano, that she saw a body in the water when she was trapped under the ice.
Jamieson told the PA news agency that her character dying in hospital was “just so sad”, as she recalled what it was like to film those scenes.
She said: “Then once she has died, she’s got scenes with Matty and (mother) Kerry (Wyatt, played by Laura Norton), and they’re like, lying with them on the bed, like chatting away to her.
“And I was just an emotional wreck. And then I’m supposed to be dead. At this point, I just was doing the worst dead acting ever.
“I was tears going down, and was trying not to vibrate. I was like, oh goodness, we’ll go again on that one, please.”
Jamieson added that the episode is more of a “tearjerker” than Wednesday’s instalment, which saw Amy having a fit in hospital, and left her partner “inconsolable” watching it.
“I mean, obviously there’s the mix of emotions of leaving and stuff like that, because six years is a long time to be somewhere,” she said, on departing the soap.
“So just knowing that.. I’m obviously not losing my friends. I get to keep them but to lose… going in and seeing them at work every day, those bits of it are really sad.”
Jamieson said that she spent a day filming the scenes underwater in a swimming pool, which meant she had to hold her breath, wear a wetsuit with weights and clothes while swimming after she falls through the ice in the soap.
To prepare for it, she did “quick training”, which involved “learning to dive down three metres, in my clothes and my shoes and back up and how to equalise for the pressure in your ears and all that kind of stuff”.
Jamieson said she worried about “panicking”, before adding that she should not have worried.
She said: “When we started to film it, because I was thinking more about, what the character was doing and stuff like that.
“I think I did just naturally start to stay down there for longer.”
Jamieson said that she was able to get some oxygen from the divers when the shot was focussing elsewhere as an arm appeared in the lake, which is speculated to belong to Nate Robinson’s (Jurell Carter) – who previously left the soap.
She also said the rehearsal set up was giving “Titanic vibes”, pointing to the 1997 Oscar-winning film.
Jamieson said: “One whole day, filming with the pool that was dressed (for the scene) and so that was just the underwater stuff. So that was just me and there that day.
“And then for all of the stuff that was on top, which was the ice that was made out of wax and everything like that.. I’d say, for all the different shots, we were probably there about a week.”
She said they would start filming around 6pm, and finish at 2am, and “every single shot” she did when coming out of the lake, she had to be covered with water.
Jamieson also called it “sad”, and “had that like extra level of emotion to it, because it was what the characters were feeling there and then, but it was also what all of us were feeling just being there all together”.
The crash also saw the death of Suzy Merton, played by Martelle Edinborough, and Leyla Harding, portrayed by Roxy Shahidi.
Jamieson has also been in ITV detective show Vera and BBC soap Doctors, as well as being nominated in 2019 for best newcomer at the TV Choice awards.
She had played Amy since 2019, after taking over the character from Chelsea Halfpenny.
