Emmerdale favourite Sam Dingle, played by James Hooton, was left brutally injured this week, when he found himself impaled on a spike after he, his sister Belle (Eden Taylor-Draper) and nephew Nate (Jurell Carter) were forced to flee from a herd of cows during the village storm.
The much-loved character seemed to be at serious risk of becoming the next fatal casualty in the soap’s 50th anniversary week. However, last night's episode saw him receive surgery for his injury's after it was discovered the spike didn't go through any of his internal organs - phew!
In a behind the scenes clip posted on Emmerdale's official Instagram account, the ITV soap reveals that a stunt double was used to perform the graphic scenes. In the hilarious clip Sam brands him "too young looking and too good looking" to be his double.
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The clip, which has since amassed 87,732 views, the stunt man Rob says: "Hi I'm James Hooten, I play Sam Dingle.." to which the real James Hooten jumps in and says: "Woah woah woah, hang on a minute, Rob we've talked about this, I'm James Hooten.
"This is Rob the stunt man, he's far too young looking and good looking to be me" he then pushes Rob away and say's: "Get out of the shot", he goes on to say: "I'm James Hooten and I play Sam Dingle" he then walks off shouting: "Rob I've had enough of this!"
The clip then goes on to show behind the scenes of how some of the stunts were filmed, at one point while James has the spike through his chest he is asked, how does it feel to be impaled, to which he jokes: "Absolutely wonderful."
The comments section is quickly flooded by fans who are delighted to see some behind the scenes snippets. One viewer @davey1784 penned: "I did wonder if that nifty leap up the bales was actually a stunt man. Pity he slipped off the other side and caused you all this trouble."
A second fan @higgs9681 said: "If he fell in muck he would come up smelling of roses", while a third @sgp8498 said: "You can see why Emmerdale won the award - cracking story lines although their wind machine was doing overtime!"
In a recent interview James revealed that while it certainly looked graphic on screen, filming the ordeal wasn't as harrowing as it looked. He said: "Costume went all out to try and find the best way of dealing with this spike scenario.
"So it looks, to me, ultra realistic when you see it on-screen, but it’s just made of foam, basically. So you’ve got one piece sticking out where the normal tractor piece would be, and costume developed this sling that I put over my shoulder. I had a little bit sticking out and part of the spike sticks into that and on the other side they ripped through the jacket to create the exit wound.”
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