Emmerdale's Sian: 'People pretend to stab me!'

Emmerdale's Sian: 'People pretend to stab me!'
Emmerdale's Sian: 'People pretend to stab me!' (Image credit: PA Wire/Press Association Images)

Sian Reeves says she's become the object of hate as people confuse her with her villainous Emmerdale character, Sally Spode. The former Cutting It star, who filmed her final scenes as bunny-boiler Sally months ago, has been taken aback by the amount of confrontations and abuse from strangers. "I've even had it from members of staff on trains, including one stewardess who came storming up to me, looked me in the eye and said, 'My husband absolutely hates you!' I've had people coming up to me and pretending to stab me with a pair of scissors and some of the abuse has actually been quite personal," she told the Daily Mirror. Sian, whose alter-ego terrorised vicar's wife Laurel in the ITV soap, added: "When it first happened, I thought it was being done in a tongue-in-cheek way, but then I realised there was some real hatred in people's eyes." Click here to watch whatsontv.co.uk’s weekly soaps video preview, the Soap Scoop

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.