‘Emmerdale’ is set to welcome two new faces next week, when Ned Porteous and Andrew Scarborough make their first appearances as rich businessman Tom Waterhouse and his right-hand man Graham Foster, and it won’t be long before sparks are flying.
Debbie Dingle will be the one who meets the pair, when she attempts to agree to a business deal with Tom, but it all begins with embarrassment as she mistakenly assumes his father-figure Graham is the wealthy one.
In the weeks that follow, the sexual tension between Debbie and Tom will become obvious, but will they actually get together? And what will Charity make of the fact her daughter could have a new (filthy rich) boyfriend?
Ahead of their arrival, HuffPost UK and other reporters grilled Ned, Andrew, Charley Webb and the soap’s producer Iain MacLeod on what’s to come. Here’s everything they told us…
Tom is really (really) rich
Producer Iain explained: “He’s mostly a self-made man but he comes from money. He’s inherited a fair amount at some point and then turned that into a small fortune.
“Part of the point of the character, really, is that Debbie being a Dingle, isn’t necessarily used to mixing in those kinds of circles.
“So she’s been through a really tough time of it with Sarah and [being a] Dingle is non-stop drama, then when she meets Tom for the first time, it’s like a holiday from her life a little bit.
“It’s the promise of the exotic and the opulence, the escapism that Tom presents so Debbie finds herself being quite seduced by that.”
Sparks fly almost immediately
“I think there’s definitely a connection between them and something is drawing her [Debbie] to him but she doesn’t quite know what it is,” Debbie said, while Ned admitted that there’s initial “friction” which soon turns into something different.
But Debbie isn’t in it for the money
Charley said: “I think she wants stability for her children and she’s definitely ambitious and wants to earn money, but I don’t think she would be with someone for the money, like Charity would be.”
We’ll find out why Tom and Graham are so close at a later point
Iain stated that the pair are “more like family members than business associates” revealing that their friendship will be explained in the future.
“Essentially they met at boarding school and there’s an incident that will come to light later on, where something big happened and one of them was involved in rescuing the other,” he said. “Since then, there’s been this big kind of... to the rest of the world it looks like a normal business arrangement, but there’s actually a closeness there and a depth emotionally speaking between them.”
Graham will also get a romance storyline
“We do have other plans for Graham as well,” Iain said. “Which is probably news to Andrew! It’s an interesting 12-month direction, romantically speaking, for Graham as well.”
Tom is actually a bit like Ross Barton
Iain revealed that while the pair won’t meet to start with, they’re “in some respects quite similar characters”.
“Except one of them was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and the other was born with an oily wrench in his mouth,” he joked. “But actually, I think they’re bizarrely like two sides of the same coin, so by that token, when they first meet they aren’t going to like each other that much.”
Charity will try her luck with him
Undeterred by the potential attraction between her daughter and Tom, Charity will do her best to catch his eye.
“She, in classic charity fashion, gets it slightly wrong,” Iain admitted. “I don’t want to give anything away but there’s a kind of funny little twist in it.
“But essentially before she’s met him, she gets a picture of him in her head and thinks well if Debbie’s not going to go there then I sure as hell am, so she gets her lucky pants on and goes out to get him and it all slightly ends in tears.”
They *could* take over at Home Farm
We’re going to watch this space on that one as when asked whether Tom and Graham would be taking up residence there, Iain replied: “I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions on that score.”
And more characters could also be introduced
“We haven’t got any concrete plans at this point but yeah, I think the story as it unfolds does suggest lots of opportunities to introduce more if we decide to so,” Iain said.
These ‘Emmerdale’ scenes air from Monday 11 September. Catch up on all the latest soap news and spoilers here.